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No, Joe Biden and schools didn’t “cancel” Dr. Seuss – but the right wants you to think they did

Several books by the late children’s book author Dr. Seuss, including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” will no longer be published due to racist and insensitive imagery, The Associated Press reports. 

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told the AP in a statement on Tuesday. “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families.” 

The rest of the books affected include “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

According to the AP, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” portrays an Asian character with slanty eyes wearing a conical hat, holding chopsticks and eating from a bowl, while “If I Ran the Zoo” includes a drawing of two bare-footed African men wearing what appear to be grass skirts with their hair tied above their heads.

While Dr. Seuss — who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel on March 2, 1904 — remains beloved by many, some of his work has drawn criticism in recent years for his depictions of people of color, including his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations. 

In 2017, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a school librarian in Cambridge, Mass., wrote an open letter to Melania Trump after the first lady had given Soeiro’s school 10 Seuss books. Soeiro thanked Trump for the books but indicated they would not be kept in the school’s collection, in part because of the “racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes” present in Seuss’ work. 

The next year, a Massachusetts museum dedicated to Dr. Seuss replaced a mural that included the illustration of the Asian character from “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” This came after children’s authors Mike Curato, Lisa Yee and Mo Willems said they would boycott an event at the museum because of the “jarring racial stereotype.”

However, much of the discussion about the merit and shortcomings of Seuss’ work remained largely in academic and literary circles — until The Daily Wire, the conservative news site co-founded in 2015 by Ben Shapiro, wrote an inflammatory article titled “Oh The Places The Woke Will Go” claiming that Virginia’s Loudoun Public School system was “cancelling” Dr. Seuss.

In a statement the school district responded, “Dr. Seuss books have not been banned and are available to students in our libraries and classrooms, however, Dr. Seuss and his books are no longer the emphasis of Read Across America Day in Loudoun County Public Schools.

“Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss. Examples include anti-Japanese American political cartoons and cartoons depicting African Americans for sale captioned with offensive language,” the statement continued. “Given this research, and LCPS’ focus on equity and culturally responsive instruction, LCPS provided this guidance to schools during the past couple of years to not connect Read Across America Day exclusively with Dr. Seuss’ birthday.” 

Regardless, this development became a lightning rod of sorts for right-wing commentators, many of whom were obviously still raw from last week’s Potato Head debacle; many characterized the school’s decision as an example of “cancel culture” or the indulgence of overzealous social justice activists. 

For example, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina — who is currently facing a string of sexual misconduct allegations, as well as an accusation that he lied about the car crash that left him partially paralyzed years ago — appeared on Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning to discuss the perceived cancellation of Dr. Seuss. 

“Well brother, I was going to the gym after this, but I don’t have to because I’m already fired up,” Cawthorn said. “This ‘cancel culture’ does not help us. If we want to heal America and end this major partisan divide, we need to stop cancelling our neighbor and actually go out and communicate with them.” 

The hosts, it should be noted, did not ask about the allegations leveled against Cawthorn. They were, however, incensed by President Joe Biden’s decision to break tradition and omit mention of Dr. Seuss from his proclamation on Read Across America Day. The Read Across America program, launched by the National Educators of America (NEA) in 1998 to promote children’s literacy, has long been associated with Geisel’s birthday, both of which are celebrated on March 2.

“One of the reasons we partnered with Seuss 20 years ago in 1997 was to kick-start this program. That was the strategy up front, so kids would see Dr. Seuss’s ‘Cat in the Hat’ and spark some attention” Steven Grant, an NEA spokesperson and manager of the Read Across America program, told the School Library Journal in 2018. 

However, Grant said at the time that the NEA was already planning to shift towards showcasing more diverse books, as well as promoting year-round literacy initiatives. 

Additionally, as Dr. Seuss Enterprises told AP, the decision to cease publication and sales of the books was actually made last year after months of discussion; it wasn’t made hastily or in response to any particular school district’s views on the books. 

“Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process. We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles,” it said.

 

Reckonings, pain and joy: ABC’s ambitious “Soul of a Nation” explores all of it for all Americans

Given its statement of purpose ABC News’ six-episode series “Soul of a Nation” would have been a relevant, necessary undertaking at any time in our recent history. Surely the audience is aware of why we need it now, in a time when needed conversations about racial inequality have been derailed.

Highlighting that urgency is the content featured within the series opener “Reckonings.” A segment on Evanston, Ill., the first locality meaningfully enacting a plan for reparations, features prominently. So does a lengthy interview with U.S. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn, who delves into detail about his harrowing experience of facing down white supremacist insurrectionists on Jan. 6.

But “Soul of a Nation” is a series whose creative team that knows its audience and, more to the point, knows America. We’d more likely to take what a show like this has to say if it’s being presented by stars to whom we can relate.

Hence the premiere’s host, “This Is Us” star Sterling K. Brown, also sits down with “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin and political commentator Angela Rye for the first recurring installment of “In the Kitchen,” a weekly conversation between newsmakers and thinkers about that week’s theme and how it relates to current events. John Legend closes out the show with an interview and a performance. 

Upcoming episodes will feature “Genius: Aretha Franklin” star Cynthia Erivo, guest hosts Jemele Hill and Marsai Martin, and interviews conducted by a variety of ABC News correspondents along with special features created by ESPN’s The Undefeated.

Episodes of “Soul of a Nation” weren’t available for review prior to its Tuesday night debut, but Salon was able to talk to series creator Marie Nelson, ABC News senior vice president of Integrated Content Strategy, about the meaning of a series conceived by Black Americans and meant “for all Americans.”

The news magazine’s primetime, midweek placement speaks to the seriousness of the network’s commitment to the project and to granting it the best broadcast exposure available. It also acknowledges an awareness of the type of marketplace in which it is entering.

“It was so important for a program like this to have a life on network television, because in truth we didn’t want to keep operating just within the confines of a bubble where we weren’t rubbing up against our general audience,” Nelson told Salon. “We wanted this to be a platform and a place where we would be drawing and attracting new and more diverse viewers in that audience.”

During our interview I referenced mention of the recent debuted “Amend: The Fight for America,” which shares an executive producer, Robe Imbriano, with “Soul of a Nation.” Like ABC’s series it is celebrity-packed and takes a close examination at a subject relevant to social justice battles that are still happening today. It’s not among the most popular TV series streaming on the service right now.

Meanwhile “Ginny & Georgia,” a series that turns a lens on a biracial teenager’s quest to find her place in the world and her struggles with racism, ranks No. 1 among its most-viewed shows. This tells us that people aren’t necessarily turned off by these conversations. It’s just that they’d rather encounter them in a fictional context. 

Nelson doesn’t intend to fight this with “Soul of a Nation.” She’s embracing it. To her, the series is a “docu-zine meets news variety show” emphasizing Black joy with the same passion as the culture’s struggle and persistence.

“We know that in this moment, people need to understand these things,” she said. “We need to know what the experience is of a Black Capitol Hill police officer who’s facing a racist insurrection. We need to witness that. But at the same time, we also need to be uplifted. So we need a space that can do both. And so that’s what we what we endeavored to do.”

Our conversation, which continues below, has been edited for length and clarity.

From the larger perspective of what last year represents obviously one would think “Yes, ‘Soul of a Nation’ is something we have to do.” But I’m wondering if there was something personal for you that made you decide, “This is something we need to do now, and we need to cover these topics”?

It was really the culmination of so many things. I had been on this journey for a long time at ABC News and in other places in my career to figure out every which way possible to advance this type of storytelling. But it was really the culmination of what I call a series of rolling pandemics last year. The moment that COVID presented itself, those of us who were part of this effort at ABC News, we very quickly knew, as the saying goes, “When white America catches a cold, Black America gets pneumonia.” And so we knew that the dimensions of the pandemic were going to show themselves along all sorts of lines of racial disparities. So the country was going through that, and going through the profound economic dislocation that was happening.

And then you had the series of deaths, from Ahmaud Arbery to Breonna Taylor to George Floyd, and then this just complete social eruption. At that point, I mean, if you think about the news division, you’re talking about people who had been running into the fire literally for months on end. We were all in this state and in a time of just feeling depleted and trying to figure out, “What could we really do that wasn’t just about the news of the the day? What could we really do that was about advancing storytelling that perhaps had a different purpose, that was about illuminating an experience? That was about creating the opportunity for greater understanding? That was going to just pierce through everything that we were swimming in, in terms of the images coming out at that time?”

I think that was the initial catalyst. The only second layer I would add to that is that because of the circumstances as a company, and when I say company I mean in terms of the broader Walt Disney company, we were really asking ourselves the tough questions and on a journey to figure out how we wanted to show up and show up differently. I think all of those things came together in a perfect moment.

There’s a lot of different ways that TV filters Black life and American Black culture for viewers. And I’m going to take us back to the late ’70s here: Obviously there’s an interest in knowing about Black history that we saw in how successful, how history-making the audience was for “Roots” right? But so much has changed since then.

There are so many channels demanding attention, and the audience share has split seemingly an infinite number of ways. I must imagine that that has to be on your mind when something like this is being scheduled and formulated. So in a brass tacks way, what did you bring to this to gain the audience’s attention. What considerations did you take into account when you were putting together the series in that regard?

It’s funny that you mentioned “Roots.” As you know, “Roots” was a most-watched television miniseries when it aired back in, I think it was 1977.  The finale was the most-watched single episode of any TV show in history at that time. [The final episode of “Roots,” which aired January 30, 1977, was watched by 100 million viewers.]

And so “Roots” became this cultural phenomenon. But if you go back to that period, quite honestly, this was considered a very, very risky proposition, the idea that audiences of all of all stripes would turn out for a program like this. No one could have gone into that experience predicting it.

It’s interesting because one of the things that we very much wanted to do with this series was to go back to that moment and to revisit it. When we were thinking about this show, we wanted it to be something that felt like a whole reflection of that experience.

We wanted it to be something that was inspired and that really looked closely at some of the painful ways in which race has compromised Black lives. But we also wanted it to be something that felt joyful. We wanted it to feel like something that explained the ways in which Black people have sustained themselves even in the face of the legacy of racism in this country.

So when we thought about the six hours and how we were going to theme them – because we did want to create some connective tissue across the various segments and stories – we really thought very carefully about how we compose that mosaic.

That’s why it was important for us to start with the “Reckonings” episode because it was a catalyst. But what you’ll even see, for example, in our next episode – which we call “Next,” because it’s focused on telling that incredibly powerful story of the next generation of Black America, what is their experience from their POV, from their vantage point – even between those two episodes, it already felt like something fresh and something that you wouldn’t often get to see.

We actually explicitly created an hour that we call “Black Joy,” because we wanted to look at it head on. And there’s no way that you can talk about the Black experience without talking about faith. But for all of these hours, for each and every one of them . . . we really wanted these things to dig much deeper than you often see portrayed on television.

Soul of a Nation

I’m glad you brought up that episode about Black joy, because after George Floyd’s murder [last year] there were so many people saying, “Okay, what do I need to read? What do I need to watch to understand this?” There is a lot of important material out there that gives people context.  At the same time, so much of the coverage has been focused on Black pain, what we’ve suffered through history and over the years. It’s necessary for people to know that. But there have been a number of people who have rightly brought up, “What about a celebration of Black excellence and Black joy?”  Can you kind of tell me just a little bit about what specifically you wanted to look at in that episode?

They [the producers and correspondents] are doing some pretty fantastic things across the six episodes. The cold open [of the first episode] is a spoken word performance by Common, where he really sets the stage with his artistry of what “Soul of the Nation” is and what soul represents. But you will see that as a drum beat across the hours.

One of the things that we’re developing for Episode 6 is that kind of cold open, but using and working with Matthew Cherry, who is one of the creative leaders behind the amazing “Black Hair” short film. The other beautiful thing that we’re working on with Alex Perez, our correspondent who’s based in Chicago, is a segment that we’re calling “Joy and Pain.” So we’re taking that critical examination.

One of the things that we wanted to have is a little bit of a drum beat there with taking a longer, deeper dive and understanding everything from the comedy of someone like a Dave Chappelle to thinking about what “Black-ish” represents in our current entertainment lineup – all of it, and really understanding that journey that we’ve been on about how Black people have used humor throughout to kind of get through hard times.

. . . I think it was important for us to try to dive a little bit deeper into the space of comedy in particular, because there’s truly nothing like the experience of comedy and being able to bring laughter to the heart of like the Black lived experience and Black comedy is such its own distinct thing, that we wanted to highlight that.

Again, for each one of the episodes, we are doing these “In the Kitchen” conversations, because what we wanted to create was that base it’s like when you watch something and you’re inside that experience, there’s nothing greater than being able to turn around and feel like you’re having that true kind of down to earth, kitchen-based conversation that you could have some of these incredibly smart and in this case humorous people sitting around a table. And so Sunny Hostin is going to moderate those conversations. We’re taping those much closer to air because we want to keep them very, very fresh and relevant to what may be happening in a particular moment closer to when we broadcast.

Were there people that you wanted to get who, and I don’t want you to go into specifics, but who maybe didn’t want to participate for the reason that some performers say, which is “I’m a performer for all people. And, you know, even though this is a series that is about the Black experience for all viewers, no thanks.” Did you have any of that as you were going forward and getting people to come and join?

We never had anyone decline for that expressed reason, even as subtext. I think if there was anything that we ran into, some of it is tied with the fact that anytime you premiere a project and you’re in Season 1, there’s always that question of proof of concept, right? There was desire to see proof of concept was really on this question of, can this series deliver against the promise? Can this actually be a space that feels different, that shows up differently that isn’t just picking at the scab of racial wounds . . . could it be real, could it be real?

That’s the thing that I’m proudest of now that I get the opportunity to see the material as it’s being produced. As a creative executive, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of some of the landmark moments in television and film. And I include in that, for example, all of the things that I’ve worked on with Stanley Nelson’s team, you know, working with Raoul Peck’s team on, “I Am Not Your Negro.” I’ve seen some of the finest work that’s ever been done. And I look at this material and I look at this storytelling and I know it’s real. And so it excites me because I think there will be no doubts, and there will be many, many people who would be proud to be featured moving forward.

“Soul of a Nation” premieres Tuesday, March 2 at 10 p.m. on ABC. 

How the Washington Post’s departing editor blew it on newsroom diversity — and why he’s not alone

Marty Baron, who stepped down as Washington Post editor this week, has been hailed as a hero by journalists at his own organization and others in the media elite. He departs amid a shower of adulatory news stories and softball interviews.

But one exchange in a Vanity Fair interview perfectly demonstrates why his departure is welcome, and overdue.

At issue was what Baron had learned from confronting the powerful criticisms being raised by some staffers about hiring, coverage and newsroom conventions that, as former Post reporter Wesley Lowery once put it, unquestioningly reflect the “views and inclinations of whiteness.”

Baron’s response was clueless, condescending and dismissive. It showed that he was only interested in performative listening — in appearing to have listened — rather than in listening itself. It made clear that he considered staffers who challenged him as ignorant supplicants who were asking him to toss away core journalistic principles “because of the sentiments of the moment,” which of course he would never do, rather than as peers who want the Post to actually live up to those principles.

It perfectly exemplified the sense of unquestioned white, male superiority that a growing number of journalists — Black, brown, white, young, old, male, female, nonbinary and at every career stage — believes is devitalizing our newsrooms at a moment when society urgently needs us to step it up.

Here’s the exchange between Baron and Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo:

Pompeo: Well, what is the answer to these very heated, emotional, divisive discussions around race and speech that we’re seeing again and again, not just at the Times, but also in just the past couple of weeks alone at Slate, at Gimlet? I guess, what did you learn or take away from your own experience as a manager confronting these issues?

Baron: Clearly we need to do a better job of listening. I think I and others probably need to do more in anticipating these issues, perhaps listening better to the staff more closely, and then drawing people out before pressure builds and it explodes. And you know, that’s probably something that I should have done. And probably something that should be done more regularly at other news organizations, including our competitors. I think people want to be heard. We need to listen to them, and by the way, listening doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to end up agreeing. I do think it’s important that news organizations have standards and that people stick to those standards. We are institutions; we are more than a collection of individuals under one group. Our institution stands for something. We have core principles that we believe in, and I wouldn’t just toss those away just because of the sentiments of the moment. But I do think that we need to talk those out more regularly with people on the staff. It’s quite possible that the way we apply those principles can be adapted to the different environment that we’re in today. But I don’t have a ready answer for how to do that. And I’ll be interested to see how people navigate it. It’s just not very easy to navigate.

I mean: Wow, right?

What did he learn from confronting these issues? He learned nothing.

“Our institution stands for something,” Baron says.

What colossal gall.

I posted Baron’s comments on Twitter and asked for feedback from others.

The most generous interpretation was that it was just word salad — so full of perhapses and possiblys and undefined terms that it amounted to nothing.

“He’s using a whole lot of words to give the impression that he’s saying something, but the tell is in stuff like repeating ‘standards’ without saying anything about what those standards actually are, or how he thinks they function,” wrote @Scoaliera1.

But there was also a lot of legitimate anger at Baron’s dismissiveness. “I want to know how does having a non-regressive stance on race go against ‘core principles’,” replied journalist Sydette Harry.

“Marty Baron seems to saying that not reporting from a white privilege perspective is somehow incompatible with ‘standards’ & ‘core principles’ of the Post — even worse, he sees the concerns about bias in coverage as ‘the sentiments of the moment,'” wrote @PaulLukasiak.

“This ‘we need to do a better job of listening to people’ is garbage. People who know have been saying what’s systemically wrong and how to fix it for a long, long time. If they haven’t gotten the message this late in the game, it’s on purpose,” wrote @AnimalSmug.

Baron’s only regret appears to be that he didn’t let staffers blow off enough steam to prevent an explosion.

It was “very much a patronizing ‘pat on the head’ position,” wrote @BeckyIB.

Diversity but not really

Baron’s comments acutely exemplify how newsroom leaders’ moves to diversify their staffs not only have been insufficient, but have been totally undercut by their refusal to listen to the people they’ve hired.

They refuse to seriously reassess their above-the-fray, both-sides approach to covering urgent national issues, even when the people they hire point out that some of those issues are matters of life and death. They refuse to consider that the vaunted notions of objectivity they defend so fiercely are actually, in practice, the views of a white guy who doesn’t even exist.

As New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote in June, in the midst of a staff revolt at the New York Times:

Many decades ago, the leadership class in big league journalism accepted the argument that racial integration had to come to their newsrooms, or the journalism would suffer. Or at least, this is what they said to themselves. But what they also said (without quite realizing it) is: We can have all that, a more diverse and multi-colored newsroom, and maintain the view from nowhere. They never faced up to the contradiction: minority journalists who are supposed to simultaneously supply a missing perspective and suppress that perspective in order to establish their objectivity.

Baron further illustrated that point in an interview with Kojo Nnamdi of Washington’s public radio station WAMU. Baron acknowledged the importance of having diverse life experiences represented in the newsroom, which he said “opens our eyes and our ears to what we might not otherwise see.”

But moments before, Baron had stressed his commitment to a concept of objectivity that he defined precisely as rejecting the value of life experiences in the reporting process. People “may come into a story influenced by their own life experiences, their own preconceptions,” he said. “It’s really important that we try, as hard as possible, to set those aside.”

And what that really means is adopting a “neutral” position that by default centers the life experiences of a white male.

The subversive subtext of the homages

As it happens, the coverage of Baron’s departure, though intended to lionize him, unintentionally highlighted to what extent newsrooms, and their narratives, are dominated by white men.

New York Times reporter Marc Tracey‘s article about Baron’s departure, and his years under new owner Jeff Bezos, was headlined in the print edition: “The Men Who Remade The Washington Post.”

The response, including from some Post staff, was blistering.

“So grateful for Great Men,” Post foreign affairs reporter Emily Rauhala tweeted, along with a nauseated-face emoji. “It’s honestly an honor just to provide low level female assistance to the men making our era.”

A Post producer expressed outrage:

As did a former Post audience editor:

The fact that a headline like that could coast its way into print says a lot about the realities of the industry.

The article itself, to my mind, also failed to make the case that Baron had done much more than not waste the vast amounts of money that Bezos poured into the enterprise. It was that investment that halted the Post’s tailspin into irrelevance. Baron hired an enormous number of very talented people — and they did the work he gets credit for.

Wesley Lowery bristled at yet another Baron puff piece, this one by the Washington Post’s own Sarah Ellison. Ellison wrote that “In Baron’s final year in Washington, unexpected leadership challenges emerged at The Post.”

Lowery responded:

Racial tension at WaPo was an “unexpected” leadership challenge last summer? That will be news to the dozens of black WaPo staffers who met w/Marty in 2015 to specifically request these issues be addressed. He said that he was too busy “saving” the paper to worry about diversity

The idea that racial tension at WaPo — a newspaper that has had constant racial tension since it started letting black people work there — would be “unexpected” just absolutely nonsensical and ahistorical.

Baron’s refusal throughout all these interviews to acknowledge mistakes tells you so much about him and his fellow newsroom leaders, and why they never learn.

Even the one time that Baron admitted any error in coverage, he did so grudgingly, and without remorse. Under persistent questioning from Marc Pitzke and Roland Nelles of Der Spiegel, Baron acknowledged that journalists should have been “much more forthright about Trump’s mendacity.” But as I wrote at the time, Baron then cast journalists as the victims of a president who exploited their “good principles,” and insisted that it didn’t really matter anyway.

In several interviews, Baron has engaged in revisionism that I can personally debunk. According to Baron, it was Bezos’ brilliant idea, when he bought the Post in 2013, to have it pursue a national and international audience, not just a local one.

As Mark Stencel, who valiantly championed that exact idea for much of his nine years at the Post, noted:

The fact is that the Post has long resisted reform from within as well as from without. And in his victory lap, Baron unwittingly explained why: Because they don’t listen to constructive criticism.

In the Post article, Baron said he was happy when Bezos bought the paper.

“I had long felt — actually well before that — that we needed fresh thinking in the industry,” he said. “Because I was not hearing any new ideas from anybody.”

CDC director: Mutant coronaviruses could wipe out gains in fighting COVID-19

After a month of falling coronavirus case numbers in the United States, President Joe Biden’s CDC director warned that the rise of mutant coronavirus strains could wipe out all of the gains made so far in fighting the pandemic. 

“Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who Biden appointed to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters on Monday. She noted that new infections increased by 2% last week compared to the week before that one, a stark contrast to how numbers had been declining over several previous weeks.

Walensky urged states to avoid prematurely lifting COVID-19 restrictions that could help slow or prevent transmission of the virus.

“I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19,” Walensky explained. She urged the public to continue wearing masks and following other public health safety measures.

“Ultimately, vaccination is what will bring us out of this pandemic,” Walensky added. “To get there, we need to vaccinate many more people.”

Public health experts shared Walensky’s sentiments.

“Although improved markedly since January, we have today an extraordinarily high level of circulating SARS-CoV-2 virus with daily case and death rates comparable to the peak of last summer’s surge,” Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, wrote to Salon. “Under these conditions, we run the real risk of a new and even greater surge with coronavirus variants that exhibit higher transmissibility, increased virulence and resistance to vaccines.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, echoed Walensky’s concern.

“While the current vaccines cover the major variants we have identified to date there is the risk of a variant emerging that escapes the vaccine,” Benjamin explained in an email to Salon. “Such escape would reestablish a new surge of infectious disease.”

Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon that he believes Walensky is “being honest and cautious. It is entirely speculative but appropriate to be concerned that variants might well arise (like the South African variant now circulating) that will be less sensitive to present vaccines.” He added that this problem can be addressed if pharmaceutical companies respond by making new variants on existing vaccines to address mutant strains, although he noted that production and distribution issues will limit corporations’ ability to get revised vaccines into the arms of the public.

Until then, Sommer argued that people need to follow public health guidelines.

“Get vaccinated, support government investment in tracking and responding to new variants, and be sensitive to the appropriate use of masking and social distancing as recommended,” Sommer told Salon.

Benjamin echoed Sommer’s view, adding that the way to avoid losing the progress made so far in fighting COVID-19 is to make sure coronavirus variants can not replicate. That in turn means they will be unable to create mutant strains that could be more transmissible or evade vaccines.

“The way to stop this is wearing a mask, hand hygiene and social distancing,” Benjamin told Salon, adding that Americans should also be “avoiding large gatherings until we get effective disease control and get community immunity via vaccination.”

Not all of the medical experts who spoke with Salon agreed with the CDC director about the variants, although all of them did stress the importance of following public health guidelines like wearing masks and social distancing. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told Salon by email that she disagrees with Walensky’s statement.

“All of the approved vaccines in the U.S. provide 100 percent protection from severe COVID-19 disease that requires hospitalization, even when the trials were conducted in regions in which the variants are circulating,” Gandhi explained. She cited as one example how the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is administered in a single dose, stopped 100 percent of COVID-19 related hospitalizations and deaths in the United States, Latin America and South Africa. This happened even though 95 percent of the South African strains at that time were of the B.1.351 variant and 69 percent of those in Brazil were also of a new mutant strain.

“Reinfection with variants leading to a symptomatic infection after vaccination or natural infection is rare,” Gandhi argued, pointing to recent studies.

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Emma Brown on how to stop our sons from growing up into monstrous men

Powerful men of the world are facing a reckoning. The list of influential men facing public allegations of sexual harassment and assault grows weekly, as it has for years. And while all of those men have their differences, they are linked by one major life event: all were once boys. Yes, it feels hard to say aloud, yet it’s true — all so-called bad adult men began life as innocent, and in many cases, sweet boys. 

Parents are apt to heed this knowledge. What went wrong in the childhood of, say, Harvey Weinstein? And how do we stop sweet and innocent boys from growing into men who do horrible things?

It’s a question journalist Emma Brown seeks to answer in her new book, “TO RAISE A BOY: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood,” which comes out today. In 2006, activist Tarana Burke coined the phrase “#MeToo” to foster empowerment among women of color who had been sexually abused. Over a decade later, the phrase evolved into a viral hashtag, popularized by actress Alyssa Milano in the wake of an explosive investigation into claims of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein.

While the Weinstein allegations unfolded, Brown was nursing her six-week old son watching the reckoning unfold on her phone. “The wave of all that, the weight of it, left me breathless and sometimes furious,” Brown writes in her book. “And it left me, too, with a persistent, niggling question: How would I raise my son to be different?” Six months after giving birth to her son, back at work she received a tip from Christine Blasey Ford and broke the story about Brett Kavanaugh.

Raising a son while reporting on #MeToo took Brown on a year-long investigative diversion, in which she interviewed researchers, parents, boys, coaches and educators. Her goal was to learn how she could raise her son, and all sons, to have better relationships with women, other men, and themselves. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never given much thought to how boys learn to be boys until that moment in time in late 2017, sitting at home with my chubby, cooing infant son, reading about the wrongdoings of men,” she writes. “These men had been infants once, too. And then they had grown up.”

What she discovers is that men, like women, suffer dangerous gender stereotypes as boys that harm their mental, emotional and physical health. In her book, she discusses how the rise of porn coincided with the decline of effective sex education in American public schools — which, taken together, makes it challenging for boys to understand boundaries and consent. She examines the importance of male friendship and mentors, and the effectiveness of burgeoning outreach and support programs. Brown leaves readers with a feeling of hope, but doesn’t downplay the challenges boys face today.

“While girls have long been allowed and even encouraged to be boyish, we are finally starting to rethink the penalty we’ve made boys pay for being girlish,” Brown writes. “More parents and teachers and coaches are starting to realize that we owe our sons the same message we are trying to give our daughters: you can become whoever you want and pursue whatever you dream.”

Salon interviewed Brown about her book; as always, the interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I love the backstory, and obviously it’s a very personal subject to you. I thought it was really interesting how you start off right away saying that people should lay off the term “toxic masculinity?” Why did you set the stage with that opinion?

As I was talking with boys and young men, I learned from them that that term, for many of them — not for everybody of course — but for many of them, was a really difficult term to take. And I think that when folks I was talking to, when they heard that word many of them felt like they knew where whoever was saying that, they knew where that person was coming from. And it wasn’t coming from a place of empathy for what it’s like to be a boy or what it’s like to be a young man. And so, in my conversations with boys and young men, I just don’t find it to be helpful because it’s so freighted and loaded with all of these conversations that sometimes you don’t even know it’s carrying for the person that you’re talking to.

So that’s why I choose not to use it. I think I quoted a boy in the book who I talked to, a high school student. He said, if you use that term nobody’s going to listen to a word you say. And so if we want boys to hear us, and we want to support boys, I think it helps to use language that they can hear and embrace.

In one part of the book you asked how we can tell boys that they must be empathetic on the one hand, yet fail to show them empathy on the other hand. I’m curious, after reporting your book, do you have an answer to that?

Well, I think we all thrive with support, right? We all need support. And that can look a lot differently in many different ways. But I think empathy is a good place to start with everybody, and if we want, just as I wrote, if we want boys to be empathetic to others, we need to be empathetic to them.

I was just pretty astonished to realize how much stress and pressure there is as a boy. I grew up thinking about all the ways in which I had to overcome my femaleness. I wrote in the book about being in eighth grade and the girls were told to play volleyball with a giant beach ball while the boys got to play with a real ball. And that’s just a tiny example, but there are a lot of ways that we are sort of familiar with thinking about how girls have been put in a box because of their gender. And I think we’re less familiar with thinking about the ways that boys are put in boxes because of their genders.

It was really eye-opening to me to talk to boys and young men about what that’s like for them, and how hard it can be when they try to push past the limitations of those boxes and expand the definition of what it means to be a boy. So, yeah, I have great empathy for boys and the particular pressures that they face growing up in America.

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You refer to the “man box” that men are forced into in America — this idea that they have to be stereotypically masculine. And you talk about the role that fathers play in building it up and tearing it down. I definitely walked away from the book more thinking the solution is in the school system, and our public rhetoric. But I’m curious if you can share more like how you think fathers can build it up and tear it down.

I think that relationships in our lives are just hugely powerful forces. And that goes for, particularly, of course, for our relationships with our parents. What was interesting to me was to read research, and then speak with fathers. I found that for fathers, the way your son is can feel like a reflection of your own masculinity. And that can be tough for dads. But the flip side of that is that dads have so much power to sort of help boys think about what masculinity is.

So there’s research, for example, that boys, young men who are in college, who can recall their dads caring for them, doing things like taking them to the doctor, or caring for them when they’re young, are more likely to envision having a more active role in their own kids’ lives.

I definitely think we’re seeing a shift like that in younger parents. I thought that the first chapter on sexual assault against boys was really eye-opening. I didn’t know about “brooming,” or know how common it is for men to be sexually assaulted at school. From your perspective as a former teacher, what do you think needs to be done to take these reports and these acts of sexual violence more seriously in schools?

I think learning about the experiences of boys who have been sexually assaulted, particularly by their peers, was incredibly hard and eye-opening for me. I saw how shame is just a really corrosive force. Boys who are sexually assaulted — and as you say, it happens more often than we talk about or more often than we really recognize — it’s just incredibly hard for them sometimes to even understand that what happened to them was sexual assault. Much less admitted to themselves or admit it to somebody else. So I guess, you know, and I’m going to talk specifically here for a minute about boys as victims of sexual assaults, I think we really owe it to our sons to give them the same message that we are trying so hard to give our daughters, which is that your body is sacred and it’s yours. And that you get to decide who touches it. 

For a long time, many schools have not been very good at dealing with sexual harassment and assault, and it’s gone unpunished and unrecognized, which makes it seem in some schools where it’s a real problem like it’s normal.

On the other hand, we don’t want to be cracking down and just suspending kids or expelling kids for the mistakes that they’re making in the course of trying to figure out life. And so I think one thing schools and parents and communities need to do is figure out how to hold young people accountable in productive ways, so that they can learn from their mistakes and grow. And also so they can keep victims of really horrific behavior — like what you’re talking about, the brooming — safe. So, we aren’t doing that very well right now in schools. I don’t know that we’re really doing it very well as a culture either.

Do you think that suspensions are an effective form of discipline in schools?

I think that boys need support to learn from their mistakes and grow. It’s hard to make blanket statements about any form of discipline, but I think what we see is that if children are simply sent home without the support to learn how to take responsibility for the mistakes that they’ve made, try to make amends with the person that they’ve hurt, or sort of repair that harm in some way, then I’m not sure they’re getting the support that they need to really learn and grow from their mistakes.

In fact, there’s piles of research that shows that suspensions are associated with really poor outcomes, in terms of higher likelihood of dropping out and other things like that. So I think we need to think more creatively about how we support boys so that they can learn from mistakes that they make.

I write about restorative justice as one model for that. And restorative justice is the process of sitting with the person that you have harmed, accepting responsibility for the harm that you caused, and coming to some agreement about how you can repair it. It’s really controversial to use [restorative justice] for sexual harm because of the power dynamic that can happen when you have a victim and somebody who hurt the victim sitting in the same room, but it is being done more and more. And it’s being done with some kinds of sexual assault here in Washington, D.C. with great success, according to the prosecutors who are sort of overseeing that program.

I thought that part on restorative justice was really interesting. I understand how it can be controversial, especially in cases of sexual assault. You mentioned that there is some success to it. Why do you think restorative justice is not being widely implemented in America’s public school system across the country?

Yeah, I think restorative justice has become much more common in public schools over time. I’m an investigative reporter at the [Washington] Post now, but I used to cover local and then national education. And over the course of my time covering education, it certainly became much more common. But I think, as with all things, restorative justice, the ideal of how it is practiced can be different than how it is practiced on the ground, under the constraints of time and money and resources. So the question is, do schools have the time and money and resources to do restorative justice? Not only to do restorative justice, but to do it well. And I think that varies widely depending on the school you’re in.

After MeToo, as a society, we’ve had to ask really big questions: What do we do with men who sexually abuse, assault and harass others? Your book explores how to raise men to be themselves, not what our culture tells them to be. But I’m wondering if through your reporting, if you found any answers to society can better handle adult men?

Yeah, as you said, I didn’t really focus on that question in this book. And I did focus more on what can we do differently so that that doesn’t happen. And I guess I want to highlight this idea of shame as a really powerful force that we should think about when we’re thinking about what can drive behavior that hurts other people. And when I say shame, I mean boys feel such pressure to be manly enough among their friends, among other boys, and fear that they won’t be seen as manly enough — and that that can, for example, drive sexual harassment. Boys are thinking more about impressing their friends than they are about the girl or young woman who is on the other end of their harassment. And that is something borne out in all kinds of research. So that’s one reason why it can be really, I think, a powerful tool to help boys think beyond really narrow ideas of what it means to be “manly.”

While I was reading the book, I was just wondering why even very young boys try to impress each other with how “manly” they are. I mean, do you think it’s because of the media they’re consuming? I know you talk about porn and childhood and access to that nowadays. What do you think?

I think that there’s no one answer to that question. We are all sort of swimming in stereotypes about what it means to be a boy, and what it means to be a girl. And we as parents reinforce some of those without even realizing it.

Sex education has been evaporating out of a lot of schools over the last few decades, which was surprising to me, even though I covered schools for years. And at the same time, online pornography has become pretty ubiquitous. And that leaves our boys in this situation of learning about intimacy from online pornography, which is dangerous for them and it’s dangerous for girls too.

I spoke to a young woman from Maine who described to me a boyfriend who would choke her in the middle of sex without asking her first, because he thought that that was sexy. He had been watching pornography where choking is not unusual and had that misconception. So when we leave boys to learn without the support and guidance of sex education and honest conversations, then we’re putting them and their partners in that situation.

Emma Brown’s book, “TO RAISE A BOY: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood,” comes out March 2, 2021 from Atria/One Signal Publishers. 

Republicans try to keep antifa conspiracy theory alive — FBI chief knocks them down

FBI Director Christopher Wray didn’t mince words on Tuesday during his congressional testimony: The Jan. 6 attack on the very building he was sitting in was an act of “domestic terrorism,” and those who carried it out were in no way “fake Trump supporters.”

“We have not, to date, seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to antifa in connection with the 6th,” Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was examining the bureau’s response to the insurrection. He labeled white supremacy a “persistent evolving threat” and “the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio.”

While he was careful not to directly blame the former commander in chief for inciting the deadly insurrection, Wray put to bed the conspiracy peddled by conservatives and Trump loyalists that the rioters were disguised antifa anarchists — or so it seemed.

Even as the Capitol attack remains in the limelight, some Republicans appeared interested in attempting to draw comparisons between seemingly unrelated events: an insurrection attempting to overthrow democracy based on lies that the 2020 election was stolen and the protests against racial injustice last summer sparked by the killing of an unarmed Black man, which in a few cases turned violent.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the panel’s top Republican, spent a considerable amount of his time addressing and inquiring about antifa and left-wing anarchists. 

“We’re not serious about tackling domestic extremism,” Grassley said, “if we tolerate mobs that attack some police officers but not all police officers … if we care about some government buildings being attacked but not others … [and] if we only focus on white supremacy movements, which isn’t the only ideology that’s responsible for murders.”

At one point, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, suggested that a certain “narrative” had been created about the insurrection and that some people — without mentioning names — were now “try[ing] to search for facts that might bolster that narrative.”

“I’ve heard the expression that here in Washington, whoever has the best narrative wins,” Cornyn said. “But, as you said, the fact is these extremist groups are not monolithic.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has faced criticism for his role in helping former President Trump try to overturn the election, homed in on how the FBI has responding to what he called the summer’s “ongoing pattern of domestic terrorism.”

Questions have swirled around the delay in deploying the National Guard to the Capitol to assist local officers. Plenty of blame has gone around, too. But that issue has now become politicized in narrow partisan terms, based on a debunked conspiracy pushed by some Republicans that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was somehow responsible.

Prompted by several GOP senators about the sluggish response of federal troops, Wray declined to weigh in, noting that he has no authority over such matters. But in his line of questioning about the topic, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., promoted the false notion that Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser had the ability to call for the National Guard. That power is reserved for governors, with the president controlling any troop response within the nation’s capital — another reason why advocates say the District of Columbia should become the country’s 51st state.

At times, the hearing was contentious. Wray faced a bipartisan shellacking over what lawmakers from both parties have said was a failure in intelligence gathering to properly prepare and warn Capitol security officials of the potential violence. He adamantly defended the bureau, stating that it had been difficult to determine the seriousness of the online chatter consisting largely of unverified threats, but that Capitol officials were offered warnings through several communication channels. 

Although several Republicans sought to shift the focus toward antifa or left-wing extremists from events last summer, none appeared willing to go quite as far as Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. Last week, Johnson pushed the debunked conspiracy theory during a congressional hearing featuring former top Capitol security officials, suggesting that “provocateurs” and “fake Trump supporters” had stormed the Capitol — rather than the ex-president’s loyalists who had heard his speech at a nearby rally just hours earlier.

Supreme Court hints it will uphold voter restrictions after GOP lawyers admit they boost Republicans

The Supreme Court expressed skepticism on Tuesday about a voting rights case pushing for the prohibition of two restrictions on voting in Arizona, an important test case for the fate of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

One restriction requires that ballot officials throw out votes cast in the wrong precinct. The other prohibits the practice of “ballot harvesting,” which allows third parties, such as organizers, community activists, or even family members, to deliver ballots on voters’ behalf. 

After a two-hour-long teleconference between justices delivering oral arguments for and against the restrictions, the conservative-majority court appeared poised to let the restrictions be, struggling to to develop a legal standard that validates some restrictions over others.

The meeting was held amid a tidal wave of over 250 Republican-backed bills in over half of the states across the country aimed at tightening voting restrictions––a sure response to former President Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. Democrats have claimed that the Republican state-level effort is an attempt to suppress minority votes and prevent the public from being widely represented in the polls. 

Tuesday’s case specifically centered on how Arizona’s voting restrictions may contradict Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” Section 2 effectively allows post facto challenges to laws that impose disproportionate voting limitations. The provision was put in place because racial minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” 

However, Section 2 has mostly been discussed with respect to gerrymandering and redistricting––not with respect to the practice of voting in itself. 

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly questioned lawyers on both sides of the argument. Roberts pressed the Democrats’ lawyers on what degree of influence would be intolerable. “What if the provision results in a 1 percent decline in participation by minority voters,” Roberts asked, “is that substantial enough?” Justice Barrett pointed out the difficulty in distinguishing an “inconvenience” from a “burden” Said Barrett, “There’s a difficulty that the statutory language and its lack of clarity presents in trying to figure out when something crosses from an inconvenience to a burden.”

Asked what the Republican Party’s investment in the case, GOP lawyer Michael Carvin suggested that a change in the status quo might hamper Republicans’ chances of winning future elections. Lifting the restrictions, Carvin said, would put Republicans “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats, Politics is a zero sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us. It’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election.”

“Bad policy and bad politics”: Joe Manchin hit for trying to cut unemployment benefits, limit checks

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other conservative members of the Senate Democratic caucus are reportedly pressing for changes to the emerging coronavirus relief legislation that would cut the bill’s proposed weekly unemployment supplement and further restrict eligibility for $1,400 direct payments.

The $1.9 trillion relief measure approved by the House of Representatives late last week proposes extending emergency unemployment insurance (UI) programs through the end of August with a weekly federal supplement of $400, up from the current $300-per-week boost that is set to begin expiring on March 14.

But as Roll Call reported late Monday after conservative Democrats met virtually with President Joe Biden to discuss the relief package, Manchin “said he’d prefer to see a $300 benefit in response to criticism that some laid-off workers could end up making more money on unemployment than they would on the job” — a right-wing talking point that Republicans have deployed in their efforts to slash UI benefits.

“We’re just looking for a targeted bill,” said Manchin, whose support Democrats need to pass the so-called American Rescue Plan (ARP) without any Republican votes.

According to the Washington Post, Manchin and other conservative Democrats also pitched “tightening income eligibility for the $1,400 stimulus payments,” a demand that House Democrats rejected in their legislation.

The House-passed relief bill calls for sending full $1,400 payments to individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and married couples earning up to $150,000 per year, with the payments gradually phasing out thereafter — an eligibility structure that resembles the one used for the previous two rounds of checks.

Despite warnings that doing so would be politically “suicidal,” Biden has previously said he would be open to lowering the income cutoff for the direct payments.

Noting that progressive lawmakers are already furious over Senate Democrats’ plans to move forward with a relief bill that excludes a minimum wage increase — pointing to the parliamentarian’s advisory ruling against the provision — economist Arindrajit Dube cautioned that slashing UI benefits or imposing additional restrictions on eligibility for direct relief payments would “cause a full blown revolt from progressives.”

House Democrats, who did not have to contend with the Senate’s so-called Byrd Rule, included a provision to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 in their relief bill.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned late Monday that “further ‘targeting’ or ‘tightening’ eligibility means taking survival checks away from millions of families who got them last time.”

“That’s bad policy and bad politics too,” Jayapal tweeted.

GOP civil war: Adam Kinzinger tears into Josh Hawley and his “smug face” during CPAC speech

Anti-Trump Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger tore into fellow Republican, but leader of the so-called insurrectionist caucus of the GOP, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., for bragging about his efforts to overturn the election during his speech at CPAC on Friday.

During a CNN interview, Kinzinger was asked whether he expects to get answers from FBI director Christopher Wray’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Hawley is a key member, on Tuesday. The Committee hopes to uncover more information behind the Capitol’s security breakdowns during the Capitol riot. 

“I think we’ll get some answers,” Kinzinger said. “But look, all you have to do is see Josh Hawley’s smug face at CPAC. There are five people dead, two that took their own life on top of that, as a result of what you did. It was embarrassing for us around the world.”

The Representative imitated Hawley, “‘‘You might have seen I rejected the…’ And everybody’s — and he’s out there, like, feeling great about it. Like, there are five people dead, two that took their own life on top of that as a result of what you did,” Kinzinger added. “It was embarrassing for us around the world.”

https://twitter.com/AllisonLHedges/status/1366737310390312966

Sen. Hawley was one of the dozen or so Senators that protested the Electoral College’s election certification on Jan. 6, citing entirely baseless allegations of widespread, systematic election fraud. Hawley was slammed just weeks ago for tuning out during Trump’s second impeachment trial. Many accused him of reading non-impeachment related material during the trial, with his feet propped up on the seat in front of him as he watched the proceedings from the visitor’s gallery.

Kinzinger, one of the nine House Republicans who broke ranks by voting to impeach Trump, has drawn sharp divides within the Republican Party. On Monday, Rep. Kinzinger formally launched an anti-Trump super PAC aimed at “defending Republican members of Congress who took a vote of conscience in favor of impeaching or convicting President Trump […] Supporting these members,” the PAC said, “is a commitment to standing for truth and a strong democracy.”

Kinzinger admitted during the interview that he “lost respect for Hawley” after the Senator’s objection to the election results. “I’m probably as conservative as [Sen. Hawley],” he said. “The difference is I am not going to use the Constitution as a prop to get elected and violate the Constitution as a prop to get elected…He knew he shouldn’t have objected to those results.”

A pipeline of oil money fuels Texas deregulators

When the blame for the collapse of the Texas electrical grid is done, the political survivors, say some environmentalists, will be the Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who opposed requiring winterizing energy delivery systems, and the Railroad Commission of Texas. Known as the RRC, this low-profile, powerful agency regulates the fossil fuel industry in Texas. The fossil fuel industry has donated tens of millions of dollars to Governor Abbott and its regulatory agency – the RRC. In neighboring Oklahoma, an industry donating to its regulatory agency would be illegal.

“Energy industry contributions to Railroad commissioners likely contributed to decisions not to require gas production facilities to be weatherized,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, former director of Public Citizen in Texas. He added that RRC commissioners raised more than $11 million in recent years, taking 60 percent of it from the oil and gas industry that they’re elected to regulate, according to a new study by Texans for Public Justice, Public Citizen, and the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. Smith noted that in an earlier analysis 60 percent of all money donated to the RRC commissioners came not when they were running for office, but before regulatory decisions.

On Thursday morning, the Texas legislature held three hearings to examine the ice storm disaster that crippled the lone star state. Some 26 million Texans lost electricity during freezing temperatures, leading to loss of heat and water, food shortages, and millions of dollars in damages when frozen pipes burst. Eleven-year-old Christian Pineda died in the cold. The deregulated electrical system in Texas allowed for a $17,000 bill for three days of scarce electricity in one house. Those kinds of bills are on hold, but not cancelled.

Texas Agencies Involved in This Disaster: ERCOT, PUC, RRC

The focus of the hearings will probably be on the non-profit that operates and manages the electric grid system in Texas, ironically named, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. Five members of ERCOT’s Board of Directors, including the chair and vice-chair, resigned as of Wednesday. Also present in the house hearings will be members of the RRC and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), which oversees ERCOT.

Smith says, “PUC has no authority over gas production. The CEOs of Texas’s two largest generating companies said at the hearing today, ‘…they had plants that failed to run because they couldn’t get gas or the pressure was too low,”’ Smith concludes. “That’s the result of the failure of the RRC to require weatherization.”

Of the three agencies, the most powerful is the misnamed Railroad Commission, which has nothing to do with railroads, but regulates oil, gas, coal, alternative fuels, and pipelines in Texas. Natural gas is burned to generate most of the electricity in Texas. During last week’s disaster, parts of the natural gas pipelines, which were not winterized sufficiently, froze and could not deliver gas to generate electricity.

Smith, a 40-year veteran of Texas environmental politics, predicts Abbott will mandate winterizing electric utilities but not the equipment that gas companies use to deliver the natural gas burned to generate electricity. He told TYT, “Time after time after time — three times in the last ten years — we paid big for RRC not requiring that we protect (natural) gas devices or wells.” After the dust of accusations settles, Smith says, without sufficient weatherization there will be a repeat electrical breakdown in Texas. Smith also notes that the ERCOT board members who resigned at Abbott’s request were all out-of-state business people. This was intentional, to make ERCOT more independent and lessen the influence of Texas business interests.

Where business interests of this fossil fuel friendly state are clearly a huge factor are with Governor Abbott and the three elected members of the RRC, all conservative Republicans.

The Fossil Fuel Donations to their Regulators

According to a study by Texans for Public Justice, Sierra Club, and Public Citizen, in his 2014 run, Abbott raised nearly $10 million from fossil fuel companies. Gizmodo reported that Syed Javaid Anwar, the CEO of Midland Energy, donated a total of $1,617,500 to Governor Abbott’s PAC, the single biggest donor to Abbott. The CEO of the Dallas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners, Kelcy Warren, donated $500,000 to Abbott’s PAC, totaling $2,117,500 from the two fossil fuel donors.

The Railroad Commission members have similar close ties to fossil fuel companies. Chairman Christi Craddick is from an oil company family based in Midland, Texas. This is part of her description on the RRC home page: “During her career as an attorney, she specialized in oil and gas, water, tax issues, electric deregulation and environmental policy.” Her ties to the oil industry, which she regulates, are so open that former RRC Commissioner Ryan Sitton, a Republican, publicly complained about what he called Craddick’s conflicts of interest. In Oklahoma, ethics laws prohibit commissioners there from holding any interests or receiving anything of value from companies they regulate.

The donations to her campaigns, according to the above study, read like a who’s who of the Texas fossil fuel companies, beginning with a donation from her father’s oil company:

“Top Contributors to Commissioner Christi Craddick”

(July 2011 through June 2016)

  • $625,937 – Tom Craddick
  • $205,390 – Syed Javaid & Vicky Anwar (Midland Energy)
  • $90,000 – James L Davis (West TX Gas/JL Davis Gas)
  • $80,718 – Mickey & Renee Long (Westex Well Services)
  • $75,000 – Trevor D & Janice Rees-Jones (Chief Oil & Gas)
  • $67,380 – Donald & Lynne Wood (Permian Enterprises)
  • $51,000 – Blackridge Consulting (lobbying and legal firm)
  • $50,000 – Terry & Pam Bailey (High Roller Wells)
  • $50,000 – Kelcy & Amy Warren (Energy Transfer Partners)
  • $50,000 – Jack Wood (Western National Bank)
  • $45,420 – Gary H & Bev Martin (RJ Mach./Falcon Bay Energy)
  • $40,000 – Rosalind & Arden Grover (Grover McKinney Oil)
  • $40,000 – S Kirk Rogers (S K Rogers Oil)
  • $37,000 – Carlton ‘Carty’ Beal (BTA Oil Producers)
  • $36,000 – Atmos Energy Corp
  • $36,000 – Parsley Coffin Renner LLP (lobbying and legal firm)
  • $35,000 – Jeffery & Mindy Hildebrand (Hilcorp Energy)
  • $35,000 – Al G Hill (A G Hill Partners)

(Note: Above contributors gave $1,650,846, or 35 percent, of what Christi Craddick raised.)

Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian is described on the RRC web page as having, “…accumulated a strong record of standing for free markets and against burdensome regulations.” The Texans for Public Justice study found nearly half of his contributions were from the fossil fuel industry he would regulate.

“Top Contributors to Commissioner Wayne Christian”

(Sept. 2013 through Oct. 2016)

  • $155,000 – Terry G & Pam Bailey (High Roller Wells)
  • $51,145 – T Chris Cooper (Oilfield Water Logistics)
  • $50,646 – Texas Oil & Gas Assn.
  • 50,000 – Dustin Bailey (CenTex Frac-Tanks)
  • $32,400 – Texans for Lawsuit Reform
  • $25,000 – Stephen & Patricia Chazen (Occidental Petro.)
  • $20,000 – James C & Paula Henry (Henry Petroleum)
  • $20,000 – NGL Energy Operating
  • $15,000 – Chesapeake Energy Corp.
  • $15,000 – James L Davis (West TX Gas/JL Davis Gas)
  • $15,000 – Laszlo & Adel Karalyos (GAIA Clearwater Corp)
  • $15,000 – Marathon Oil Corp.
  • $15,000 – Anne W & John L Marion (Burnett Oil Co.)
  • $12,500 – Exxon Mobil Corp.
  • $10,300 – Energy Transfer Partners Houston

(Note: Above contributors gave just over $500,000, or almost half of what Christian raised.)

The third RRC commissioner was not in office when the 2016 study was completed. As TYT reported last week, the RRC web page describes Commissioner Jim Wright as a part of the fossil fuel industry, saying, “…he has successfully used his hands-on experience to create a group of environmental services companies that service the energy industry.”

Twitter banned Trump — now Jim Jordan wants a hearing to “address the scourge of cancel culture”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is calling on House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler to hold a hearing to “address the scourge of cancel culture” in the United States.

In a letter to Nadler shared by the House Judiciary GOP, Jordan said the alleged phenomenon is a “dangerous trend” of “silencing and censoring certain political speech,” adding that “the wave of cancel culture spreading the nation is a serious threat to fundamental free speech rights in the United States.”

“From newsrooms to college campuses to social media giants, we have seen a dangerous trend toward silencing and censoring certain political speech,” Jordan wrote. “As the committee entrusted with upholding the Constitution and our fundamental liberties, our first full committee hearing for the 117th Congress must examine this cancel culture sweeping America.”

He went on to say that the First Amendment, which “guarantees to all Americans the right to speak freely,” has “allowed our country to develop and maintain a political discourse fueled by the free exchange of ideas.”

“This freedom has empowered risk-takers and innovators. It has shaped bold new ideas and given us a prosperous democracy,” Jordan wrote. “Quite simply, it has made the United States the envy of the world.”

Jordan said, “Twitter and Facebook have censored and de-platformed prominent conservatives — including the sitting president of the United States.”

As Fox News points out, Jordan’s letter comes a day after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), concluded, of which the theme was “America Uncanceled.”

Jim Jordan, MTG and other Republicans now falsely blaming Pelosi for Jan. 6 debacle

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, recently earned four Pinocchios from the Washington Post‘s fact checker over his false claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied a request for National Guard troops prior to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

But Jordan has been far from the only Republican or prominent conservative voice to pretend that such a baseless assertion is reality on Twitter, the social media site where such falsehoods have spread like wildfire. Several other Republicans and Trump allies have circulated — or at least appeared to entertain — the same narrative.

The top Republicans on the House Administration, Intelligence and Oversight Committees — Reps. Rodney Davis of Illinois, Devin Nunes of California and James Comer of Kentucky, respectively — signed onto a Feb. 15 letter to Pelosi along with Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

The letter, which came the same day as Jordan’s false tweet about Pelosi delaying the National Guard, speculated by suggesting that then-House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving had been concerned about the “optics” because of Pelosi.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., spread the same notion this past weekend in separate tweets.

“It’s finally come out that Nancy Pelosi specifically directed National Guard to stay off Capitol grounds on January 6th because of ‘optics,'” Cawthorn wrote. “Pelosi was more concerned about optics than the safety of her colleagues and the American people.”

“.@SpeakerPelosi,” Greene posted, sharing a Daily Caller story that echoed the GOP letter about optics,” did you deny National Guard at the Capitol???”

The claims have been undercut, most notably by public testimony from Irving, former Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger and former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund on Feb. 23 before a Senate committee. Pelosi’s office has also said that the speaker approved National Guard troops — a topic not discussed with her prior to the riot — as soon as Irving made the request when the Capitol was being overrun.

Irving testified that deploying National Guard troops was not discussed with congressional leadership until Jan. 6, and that “optics as portrayed in the media played no role whatsoever in my decisions about security.” Stenger confirmed that he had also not discussed the matter with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who at the time was majority leader, before that day.

None of the Republican offices whose members have circulated the Pelosi narrative immediately responded to requests for comment. Jordan’s office had pointed the Post to the Feb. 15 letter he signed.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the idea that Pelosi delayed federal assistance to the building where lawmakers, staff and journalists were hiding for their lives continues to be circulated. Now, Trump himself has even helped disseminate the baseless claim.

In an interview with Fox News late Sunday, Trump falsely said he “requested” 10,000 National Guard troops, an assertion that earned him four Pinocchios from the Washington Post.

“I requested … I definitely gave the number of 10,000 National Guardsmen, and [said] I think you should have 10,000 of the National Guard ready,” Trump said. “They took that number. From what I understand, they gave it to the people at the Capitol, which is controlled by Pelosi. And I heard they rejected it because they didn’t think it would look good. So, you know, that was a big mistake.”

An official Defense Department planning and execution memo makes no mention of the supposed troop order, and a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed on the record to The Post that the agency had “no record of such an order being given.”

It was not the first time that Trump mentioned a 10,000-troop order. It was first documented in a Vanity Fair story from January. But as the Post highlighted, simply referencing the idea is not the same as acting on it, as the then-president did when he ordered troops to be stationed throughout the nation’s capital last summer amid unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. 

Rising GOP star Madison Cawthorn faces renewed scrutiny as sexual misconduct allegations resurface

Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina is suddenly facing a cascade of bad news that threatens to undermine the rising GOP star just as he begins to troll his way to the top. Amid a string of sexual misconduct allegations that resurfaced last week, Cawthorn has been accused of lying about the car crash that left him partially paralyzed years ago. 

On Saturday, Buzzfeed News published a report interviewing over three dozen people from Cawthorn’s past who corroborated accounts that the now freshman Republican congressman has a history cornering women with sexual advances. According to the report, Cawthorn would take women on “fun drives” during his time at Patrick Henry College where he would allegedly take women on back roads routes around campus and attempt to kiss or touch them inappropriately. Cawthorn is accused of pressuring one woman to sit on his lap, and when she resisted his attempts to kiss her, he allegedly held her face in place so she couldn’t get away.

Over 150 of Cawthorn’s former classmates signed a letter confirming the veracity of the allegations made against him. “During his brief time at the college,” it read. “Cawthorn established a reputation for predatory behavior. His modus operandi was to invite unsuspecting women on ‘joy rides’ in his white Dodge Challenger. Cawthorn would take young women to secluded areas, lock the doors, and proceed to make unwanted sexual advances.” 

Cawthorn was also accused by several former classmates of making racist and sexist comments throughout his time in college. In one instance, Cawthorn allegedly asked a former friend: “Which race of girls gives the best blowjobs?” Cawthorn is also accused of routinely bragging about his car-involved “conquests” and claiming that “girls like that stuff.” His small posse of men was known on campus as “the douche crew.”

Although it’s not the first time these allegations have surfaced, many of the details are new. Cawthorn, for his part, has vehemently denied them. Back in September of 2020, Cawthorn told CNN, “I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life.”

“If I have a daughter,” he said last year in a town hall debate, “I want her to grow up in a world where people know to explicitly ask before touching her. If I had a son, I want him to be able to grow up in a world where he would not be called a sexual predator for trying to kiss someone.”

On Saturday, the Washington Post brought forward a new claim made against Cawthorn: He lied about the car crash which left him partially paralyzed. According to the report, Cawthorn’s account both exaggerates key details of the story, which he recounted in 2017 during a chapel address at Patrick Henry College:

“He was my brother, my best friend. And he leaves me in a car to die in a fiery tomb. He runs to safety deep in the woods and just leaves me in a burning car as the flames start to lick my legs and curl up and burn my left side. Fortunately, there was several bystanders who come by and they break the window open that they pulled me out to safety and they sat me down. The paramedics arrive and decided that I’m gone and I have no pulse, I have no breath. And I was, I was declared dead on the scene. For whatever reason, may it be adrenaline or divine intervention, I definitely believe it’s the latter, I had a deep inhale of breath.”

The friend detailed in Cawthorn’s story, however, gave the Post a very different account of what transpired.

“That statement he made was false,” said his friend, Bradley Ledford. “It hurt very badly that he would say something as false as that. That is not at all what happened. I pulled him out of the car the second that I was able to get out of the car.” Ledford also alleged that Cawthorn was not “declared dead,” but rather, incapacitated.

During his recovery, Cawthorn reportedly told doctors that he would “be at the Naval Academy by Christmas,” even though Cawthorn himself later admitted in a lawsuit that he had been rejected by the academy prior to the crash. In a deposition conducted for the lawsuit, Cawthorn claimed to have “no memory from the accident.” As Salon reported, Cawthorn’s family enlisted the help of family friend and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, whose son found a top Florida attorney to add firepower to Cawthorn’s case. Cawthorn was awarded a $3 million payout and is still seeking $30 million.

In the past, Cawthorn has also lied about the success of his business.

His campaign ads repeatedly made the claim that the Representative was a successful business owner. However, his real estate investment firm, SPQR Holdings, recently reported zero income, with Cawthorn as the sole employee. 

Cawthorn also alleged during the campaign trail that, prior to casting his bid, he was training for the 2020 Paralympics Games, intending to compete in the 400-meter dash. “I had an opportunity for the Paralympics for track and field,” he told Christian podcast The Heal. However, no such “opportunity” materially existed. Cawthorn has no record of competing in any qualifying races and was not included in the registry of athletes considered by the The International Paralympic Committee –– list which is publicly available.

On Tuesday, Rep. Cawthorn was brought onto Fox & Friends First for an interview about the purported cancellation of Dr. Seuss. Although Cawthorn is currently embroiled in all kinds of allegations of lying and misconduct, the hosts failed to ask him anything about such concerns. 

“Ignore the Parliamentarian”: Bernie Sanders is forcing a vote on the $15 minimum wage

Calling on the Senate Democratic majority to disregard the advice of the unelected parliamentarian, Sen. Bernie Sanders late Monday announced he will force a vote this week on an amendment to include a $15 minimum wage provision in the pending $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

“At a time when millions of workers are earning starvation wages, when the minimum wage has not been raised by Congress since 2007 and stands at a pathetic $7.25 an hour, it is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage,” Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement.

The Vermont senator’s announcement came as the White House and Senate Democrats signaled a retreat from the effort to include a minimum wage increase in the coronavirus relief package after the parliamentarian advised last week that the measure would run afoul of the Byrd Rule, which requires provisions of reconciliation bills to have a direct — not “merely incidental” — impact on the federal budget.

Citing two anonymous Democratic aides, the Washington Post reported Monday that “Senate Democrats will move forward with a version of the relief bill that does not attempt to raise the minimum wage.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech Monday that the chamber will begin voting on the sprawling relief package this week, with an initial procedural vote expected as early as Wednesday.

In his statement Monday night, Sanders said he was “extremely disappointed by the decision of the parliamentarian, who ruled that the minimum wage provision was inconsistent with the Byrd Rule and the reconciliation process.”

Echoing the calls of progressive House Democrats and dozens of grassroots advocacy groups representing millions of people across the U.S., Sanders said his “own personal view is that the Senate should ignore the parliamentarian’s advice, which is wrong in a number of respects.”

“I am not sure, however, that my view at this point is the majority view in the Democratic caucus,” the Vermont senator added, alluding to opposition from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). “Obviously, as soon as we can, we must end the filibuster that currently exists in the U.S. Senate. Given the enormous crises facing working families today, we cannot allow a minority of the Senate to obstruct what the vast majority of the American people want and need.”

Progressives in recent days have pushed Vice President Kamala Harris to overrule the parliamentarian’s advice, which she has the constitutional authority to do. Should the vice president opt to use that authority, it would take 60 votes in the Senate to overrule her.

But White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was adamant during a Monday briefing that Harris will not attempt to overrule the parliamentarian, the official tasked with interpreting Senate rules.

Asked by NBC News reporter Geoff Bennett why the White House appears to be fighting harder to salvage the collapsing nomination of budget office pick Neera Tanden than to keep the minimum wage increase in the coronavirus relief package, Psaki accused Bennett of “mixing a few things kind of irresponsibly.”

Sanders made clear Monday that he will continue pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour if his coronavirus relief amendment fails to pass this week.

Following the parliamentarian’s advisory ruling against the proposed pay raise last week, Sanders and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) began crafting a backup plan that would impose tax penalties on large corporations that don’t pay their employees $15 an hour. But Sanders and Wyden reportedly dropped the plan after it became clear that the measure would be too difficult to implement and that there wouldn’t be sufficient support to include it in the emerging Covid-19 relief package.

Speaking to the press about his new $15 minimum wage amendment, Sanders said Monday that “there will be a roll call vote, and we’ll see who votes for it and doesn’t.”

“I would suggest that those who vote against it from a political point of view, that’s a mistake. The American people want to see that minimum wage raised,” Sanders continued. “Let me be very clear—if we fail in this legislation, I will be back.”

Why America needs new infrastructure to survive

Patricia McDonald layered on sweaters, socks and mittens and huddled under blankets for 15 hours as the temperature in her Duncanville, Texas, home plunged to 42 degrees in the wake of Winter Storm Uri.

Well after the water in her kitchen froze, McDonald decided she’d had enough and braved a hair-raising ride over snow-covered, ice-slicked roads to get to her daughter’s house several miles away.

The Dallas County probation officer was safe and warm there. However, McDonald couldn’t establish the computer connection she needed to check in with colleagues, and she worried about clients who had had fewer resources than she did for surviving the state’s massive power failure.

This isn’t merely a Texas problem. Failing infrastructure—from pothole-scarred roads and run-down bridges to aging utility lines and dilapidated water systems—poses just as big a threat to the rest of the country.

Without a bold rebuilding campaign, Americans will continue to risk their well-being and livelihoods as the nation collapses around them.

McDonald, financial secretary for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9487, which represents hundreds of city and county workers in Dallas, grew increasingly angry knowing that it took just several inches of snow and frigid temperatures to knock out the Texas power grid and paralyze the state.

Some Texans, confronted with days-long power outages, slept in idling motor coaches that officials turned into makeshift warming centers or drove around seeking hotel rooms that still had light and heat.

Others hunkered down at home, melting snow to flush toilets after frozen pipes burst or heating rooms with generators and charcoal grills despite the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. A handful of people froze to death, including an 11-year-old boy found lifeless in his bed.

But even as McDonald and other Texans waited for power to be restored, police and firefighters in Philadelphia used rafts to rescue at least 11 people trapped by a torrent of water after a 48-inch main ruptured in the city’s Nicetown neighborhood.

On February 5, a utility worker in Oldsmar, Florida, averted disaster when he noticed that a hacker had taken over his computer and increased the amount of lye in the drinking water supply to dangerous levels. The security breach provided a chilling reminder that financially struggling water systems not only contend with lead-tainted pipes and failing dams but also with vulnerable computer systemsthat require urgent improvements.

America cannot move forward if it continues falling apart. That’s why the USW and other labor unions are championing a historic infrastructure program that will modernize the country, improve the nation’s competitiveness and create millions of jobs while simultaneously enhancing public safety.

“There needs to be change,” said McDonald, one of the millions affected by the blackouts that utilities hurriedly imposed because surging demand and equipment failures put the whole power grid “seconds and minutes away” from a catastrophic failure that could have left the state without electricity for months.

A major infrastructure investment, such as the one President Joe Biden envisioned in his Build Back Better plan, will create jobs not only for the workers who build roads and bridges but also for the Americans who manufacture aluminum, cement, fiberglass, steel and other items essential for construction projects.

Stronger, more resilient infrastructure will help America weather the ever more frequent, increasingly severe storms associated with climate change. That means not only upgrading power grids but also encasing utility poles in concrete or relocating power lines underground. It also requires strengthening coastal barriers to guard against the growing hurricane damage that Texas and other states face.

Expanding broadband and rebuilding schools will ensure that children across the country have equitable access to educational opportunities. Investments in manufacturing facilities will enable the nation to rebuild production capacity decimated by decades of offshoring.

And an infrastructure campaign will ensure local officials have the resources they need to manage growth, such as the huge expansionunderway at the Electric Boat submarine shipyard in Groton, Connecticut.

Kevin Ziolkovski welcomes the business that the shipyard brings to his community. But Ziolkovski, who represents dozens of Groton Utilities workers as unit president of USW Local 9411-00, said it makes no sense for the federal government to continue awarding bigger contracts to Electric Boat without providing sufficient funds for related infrastructure.

Ziolkovski says Groton Utilities needs $3.5 million more just to construct a new water tank for the shipyard, one of its biggest customers. He also knows that Groton and other towns need funds to upgrade roads, sewerage systems, public transit and recreational amenities to accommodate the expected influx of workers and their families.

“If you want to see these multibillion-dollar nuclear submarines get built for the defense of the entire nation, you should support everything that goes into that, too,” said Ziolkovski, who sees a national infrastructure program as one solution and developed a briefing book on local infrastructure needs for Connecticut’s congressional delegation.

McDonald, who returned to her home after three days to find the power back on but her neighborhood under a boil-water advisory, knows that other communities will suffer unless the nation embraces a rebuilding program.

It pains her to know that America fell into such disrepair that it cannot provide basic services, like power and safe roads, at the very time people need them most.

“There’s no excuse for this,” she said.

The Cuomo scandal illustrates the limits of #MeToo — and the need to hold men to a higher standard

Monday night, a third woman stepped forward to accuse Gov. Andrew Cuomo of being what a 19th century author might delicately describe as “overly familiar.” Anna Ruch, speaking with the New York Times, described meeting New York’s Democratic governor at a wedding in 2019, at which he, moments after meeting her, put his hands on her bare lower back, asked if he could kiss her, and called her “aggressive” when she removed his hands from her body. 

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” Ruch told the Times, corroborating her story with a friend’s account and a picture that makes clear how gross the entire situation was for her. 

Ruch’s account follows two other accusations from two other women who worked under Cuomo in the governor’s office.

Charlotte Bennett worked as an executive assistant and health policy adviser to Cuomo. The New York Times reports allegations that he engaged her in intrusive conversations about sex and dating, “including whether she thought age made a difference in romantic relationships, and had said that he was open to relationships with women in their 20s — comments she interpreted as clear overtures to a sexual relationship.”

The other accusation, from former aide Lindsey Boylan — who is currently running to be the Manhattan borough president — is far more serious. In an essay published at Medium, Boylan describes Cuomo forcibly kissing her, asking her to play strip poker, and constantly finding excuses to touch her inappropriately. Unlike with the other two accusations — which the governor responded to with a tacit but still blame-deflecting admission that he’s done things that “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation” — Cuomo’s office has adamantly denied Boylan’s account. 

While Republicans have been hypocritically calling on Cuomo to resign, Democrats have largely been more circumspect. The response has largely been to call for an investigation, not an immediate resignation. 

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Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times interpreted this response as evidence that power of the #MeToo movement has weakened, especially in light of “tremendous bitterness toward those who pressured Al Franken to leave the Senate in 2018 after he was accused of grabbing several women’s butts.” She also points out that “many Democrats are sick of holding themselves to a set of standards that Republicans feel no need to try to meet.”

The latter is absolutely true. The same Republicans who stood by Trump or Justice Brett Kavanaugh are pretending to care about these allegations for nakedly opportunistic reasons. And certainly, there’s no doubt still many Democrats still support Franken, and clearly believe a little bit of unwanted ass-grabbing is something women should just put up with. But I wouldn’t be writing the eulogy for the #MeToo movement just yet. It’s just as likely that people are slow-walking this Cuomo story for reasons other than a declining interest in fighting sexual harassment. 

For one thing, despite the repeated efforts to paint the #MeToo movement as a bunch of hysterical ninnies whining about being flirted with, the reality is the vast majority of stories unearthed during the height of the movement in 2017 and 2018 were about blatantly illegal behavior from men. Most men exposed had been getting away with violations ranging from illegal workplace harassment to outright criminal assault and rape. And while a lot of Democrats still defend Franken, it’s important to recall that some of the accusations against him involved groping, which falls under the umbrella of “sexual battery” in most states. 

Bennett and Ruch’s accusations fall into more of a legal gray zone.

Bennett describes Cuomo dropping a lot of hints but not outright hitting on her, which may or may not fall outside of the legal definition of sexual harassment, depending on how persistent it was. Ruch’s story is gross, but even the most Valerie Solanas-loving feminist probably doesn’t like the idea of using the blunt instrument of the law to handle men pressing their luck with women at parties. Boylan’s accusations are more serious, but she is unwilling to talk to journalists who can do the leg work of investigating her claims, and feminists — despite accusations to the contrary — do not want to punish men over unverified accusations. Under the circumstances, waiting for results from an investigation into claims isn’t overly cautious, but common sense. 

Ruch’s account, aided by unsettling photographic evidence, does open some questions, like how to talk about the problem of sexually domineering behavior that doesn’t cross legal lines but is still creepy and unfair to women who deserve to move through their lives without having to navigate intrusive behavior from men. There’s very few women alive who don’t have stories like Ruch’s, of men who keep crossing boundaries women set. These men exploit the fact that women draw more social penalities for “acting out” or “being a bitch” for setting the boundary than men do for being jerks. Ruch’s telling illustrates this phenomenon. She tried to gently set a boundary by removing Cuomo’s hands before he immediately called her “aggressive.” One can only imagine how bad it would be if she had actually been aggressive. Women who push back harder often get called names or yelled at. Or worse. Men act like creeps because they know it’s women who get the social disapproval for pushing back, and not the men who necessitated the pushback. 

The ugly truth is that the only real solution for this problem is social shifts, so that men face more opprobrium for crossing lines than women do for setting them.

The problem is, despite all the hand-wringing about “cancel culture” and “#MeToo going too far,” most people live in a world where there’s still a greater social penalty for women who say no than for men who keep pushing. I don’t have the answer for how we get there. The best I can offer is to keep talking and telling stories and making men uncomfortable and standing up for women when this happens, rather than the current situation, where it’s women and not creepy men who get accused of “making a scene.” Cultural change requires a lot of diligence and small but persistent choices made on a daily basis by large numbers of people. But it can be done. I’ve seen a lot of change in the course of my own life, in terms of men behaving with more respect in social situations. We have a long way to go, but that amount of change suggests more is possible. 

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So far, the Cuomo scandal illustrates the limits of what the law can do to force men to be better. We can arrest men for sexual assault. We can sue them and fire them for sexual harassment. But no one wants to call the cops on someone for being a lech at a wedding. That falls into the more complex realm of social policing, and that will require ordinary people to actively choose, on a daily basis, to stop prioritizing men’s feelings over women’s freedoms. It can be done, but only if we keep talking and telling our stories. 

Democrats decry “new Jim Crow” as Georgia GOP passes drastic new voting restrictions

Georgia State House Republicans approved a sweeping bill that would make it harder for voters to cast ballots in response to rampant false claims about election fraud that top state officials have repeatedly debunked.

The Georgia House voted 97-72 along party lines to approve a bill that would limit Sunday voting to a single day, restrict mail ballot drop boxes to early voting locations, require voter ID for mail ballots, set the deadline for voters to request mail ballots to 11 days before the election, and cut the amount of time between general elections and runoffs from nine weeks to four. The bill would also ban nonprofits from helping fund elections, ban the state from sending out mail ballot applications that were not requested, restricts the use of mobile voting buses to emergency situations, and even bars anyone from giving free food and drinks to voters waiting in line. Some Georgia voters were forced to wait up to 11 hours to cast their ballots last year.

The restrictions come after Democrats carried Georgia in the presidential election, amid record turnout, and then won both of the state’s Senate races in a runoff election, again with record turnout. It was the Democratic Party’s biggest triumph in the Deep South for decades. Former President Donald Trump and his allies pushed baseless allegations of voter fraud and election-rigging that were repeatedly rejected by courts. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and multiple recounts and audits repeatedly showed that there was no evidence of widespread fraud even as Trump pressed the Republican official to “find” him enough votes to pull ahead of President Joe Biden.

“Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly are trying to change the rules of the election here in Georgia, rules that you wrote, because you were handed defeat,” state Rep. Kimberly Alexander, a Democrat, said during a lengthy debate on Monday. “You know that your only chance of winning future elections is to prevent Georgians from having their votes counted and their voices heard.”

Republicans have tried to justify the push by citing voter concerns over election integrity. Democrats say that’s hypocritical, since those concerns were prompted by months of Republican lies about mail voting.

“Our goal in this bill is to make sure that Georgia’s election results get back quickly and accurately,” state Rep. Barry Fleming, the bill’s Republican sponsor, said on Monday. “The way we begin to restore confidence in our voting system is by passing this bill. There are many commonsense measures improving elections in this bill.”

Raffensperger has supported some voting restrictions but rejected the House bill and other proposed voting legislation as “reactionary to a three-month disinformation campaign that could have been prevented.”

Former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said the Republican effort resembles “post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era laws.” Former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean agreed that the state’s Republicans responded to the election of its first Black senator and its first Jewish senator by “passing new Jim Crow voting laws.”

The Abrams-founded voting rights group Fair Fight Action called the bill “one of the strictest and most anti-democratic pieces of voter suppression in the country,” saying it threatened to “send voting rights in Georgia back to the days of Jim Crow.” The bill “does nothing but harm voters and fuel conspiracies to undermine our democratic institutions,” the group said.

Critics have said the weekend voting restrictions will disproportionately affect Black voters because churches traditionally hold “Souls to the Polls” events to bring parishioners to vote on Sundays. Other measures, like restrictions on mobile voting buses — predominantly used in the Atlanta area — and voter ID restrictions, threaten to disproportionately affect Black voters as well.

“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the November election and Georgia flipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” Democratic state Rep. Renitta Shannon told the Associated Press. “And now they are doing anything they can to silence the voices of Black and brown voters specifically, because they largely powered these wins.”

The House bill will now head to the state Senate, where a Republican-led committee on Monday advanced its own bill that would entirely end no-excuse absentee voting, which was used by a record 1.3 million Georgians to participate in November’s election. There are about two dozen restrictive voting bills pending in the state legislature.

Georgia’s extreme voting restriction push is the centerpiece of a national Republican push to shrink voter access after losing key elections amid record turnout. Lawmakers in 43 states have already rolled out more than 250 restrictive bills, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Democrats say many of these restrictions would have been barred if the Supreme Court had not gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of racial discrimination to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department for any electoral changes. Democrats say Georgia, which has shuttered hundreds of polling places and purged tens of thousands of voters since the Supreme Court decision, is moving backward as its demographics are rapidly becoming more diverse.

“Republicans voted as a caucus to enact the most blatantly racist attacks on voting rights in the South since Jim Crow, after losing in an election system they planned, built, and oversaw,” Rep. Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the Georgia Democratic Party, said in a statement. “Let history show that instead of fighting for our democracy, these cowards betrayed Georgia voters, threw out truth and facts, and attempted to undo Georgia’s legacy as a home for civil rights and accessible elections.”

The Biden administration has highlighted the need for federal legislation to ensure voter protections, particularly for communities of color. The administration on Monday backed H.R. 1, a sweeping election reform bill that could be voted on by the House as soon as this week, in response to “an unprecedented assault on our democracy, a never before seen effort to ignore, undermine, and undo the will of the people, and a newly aggressive attack on voting rights taking place right now all across the country.”

Still, the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate since it needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. A growing number of Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, have called for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

But while H.R. 1 would implement automatic voter registration, allow same-day registration, require at least 15 consecutive days of early voting, require voting locations to be open at least 10 hours and be located near public transportation in rural areas, and require independent redistricting commissions to curb partisan gerrymandering, many Democrats say that’s still not enough. The party is also pushing to advance the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would, among other measures, restore the original Voting Rights Act provisions gutted by the Supreme Court.

Abrams said both bills are critical to respond to “Republican state legislatures rolling back on the clock on voting rights.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., agreed that without federal legislation “states will keep passing racist voter suppression laws.”

“If that means ending the filibuster, so be it,” she tweeted.

But centrist Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have vowed to oppose any efforts to eliminate the filibuster, leaving the fate of voter protections under threat of Republican obstruction.

“The argument that preserving the filibuster is necessary because it’s an important tool in our Democracy,” argued former Obama adviser David Plouffe, “falls apart when it’s clearer with every passing day we won’t have a Democracy without Congress passing voting rights legislation.”

Can you eat raw scallops? A definitive explainer

The day I joined Alex Todd on his scalloping boat out of Portland, Maine, I missed a key memo: Bring lunch. Alex is a day-boat scallop fisherman, which means he drags for scallops only in the short winter season, leaving at dawn and staying at sea until he’s filled his 15-gallon quota, which that day took 12 hours. Alex’s generosity saved me. While he and his crew ate prepacked sandwiches, I lunched on his scallops, untouched, shucked from their shells minutes before. The answer to can you eat raw scallops is emphatically, 100% yes.

Raw scallops are not just edible; they’re incredible. The scallop’s natural sweetness is never on display so clearly as before it’s cooked. And uses for raw scallops are endless: carpaccio, crudo, tartare, sushi, or, as on that day, just popped in your mouth like candy. The one catch: To go raw, you need to choose your scallops carefully. What you find behind most supermarket seafood counters won’t live up to my lunch at sea.

If you’re planning to eat raw scallops, there are a couple terms you should keep in mind while shopping: “dry” and “day boat.” To understand these qualifiers, it helps to know how your conventional supermarket scallop is harvested and handled. Most sea scallops on the market are caught by large boats that go on harvesting trips lasting up to two weeks. Whether the scallops are caught on day one or day 14, they all go into a hold (a cavernous space in the hull of the boat) and sit on ice for the remainder of the trip. As you can imagine, there is a big quality drop-off for a scallop that’s 14 days old before it even hits the shore, not to mention the time it takes to make it through the supply chain to your supermarket, and then onto your plate. But it’s not just the age that matters; as that ice melts, the scallops begin to soak up excess water. This makes them bigger, but it dilutes their flavor.

When the scallops reach land, the real trickery comes into play. Many scallop processors who buy scallops then give them another soak, this time in sodium tripolyphosphate (a preservative that also makes the scallops suck up a lot more water). Scallops are sold by the pound, so the buyer ends up paying for all that extra water. This process is completely legal, and no labeling is required at the supermarket counter to tell you how old the scallops are, or what they’ve been soaked in. You won’t know until you get home and find that you’re biting into the kind of briny water balloon that definitely shouldn’t be eaten raw — a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

So how do you make sure your scallops are neither weeks old nor full of water and chemicals? First off, make sure you’re buying from a fishmonger or company you trust. This can be a market down the street or an online retailer across the country—the important thing is that they speak knowledgeably about what they’re selling, and can verify where it came from and how it was handled.

Then, demand “day-boat” scallops. Unlike trip boats, day boats bring their catch to shore the same day they are pulled from the ocean. This is less efficient than a two-week-long trip filling a massive hold, but it means the scallops get to you when they’re still incredibly fresh. Those scallops on Alex Todd’s boat? Any that I managed not to devour were landed that night and available for sale the next day, which means you’d get pretty much the same flavor I got on deck.

“Dry” isn’t how the scallops taste; it means that the scallops were never soaked, so what you’re eating is the scallop muscle exactly as it left the shell. Buying dry scallops eliminates the possibility of chemicals and scallops that are too waterlogged to effectively take on the flavors of extra-virgin olive oil, fresh citrus juice, or anything else you’re using to season them. If you’ve never tasted a scallop that hasn’t taken on extra water, you will be shocked by the incredible sweetness and firmness compared to its soaked counterparts.

Buying dry day-boat scallops will certainly cost you more per pound than a chemical-soaked scallop from a trip boat. But the taste, quality, and sustainability you’re buying are well worth the investment, especially when you’re planning to eat them raw. Cooking can mask a lot of flaws, but biting into a raw scallop will tell you much more about that scallop’s journey. Keep that journey from the ocean to your plate short, simple, and trustworthy, and you’ll be wondering why you’ve been wasting all that time over the stove.

Related recipes

The game-changing, ultra-efficient way to zest citrus

I used to take my sweet time zesting lemons. I’d skate the Microplane around the surface, leisurely and randomly, either letting the zest collect in the shoot or watching it rain gently into the bowl of batter. I had all the time in the world.

But then I started spending part of each week in a professional pastry kitchen, where I zest upwards of 20 lemons in a row during every shift. One day, as I was humming along, a more experienced pastry cook asked if I’d like to learn the efficient way to get the job done. Yes!, I shouted, knowing that watching me zest my lemons must have been, to her, as frustrating as walking behind someone moving at a glacial pace through Times Square.

To make a lemon (or lime) completely bald in as few strokes as possible, the key is to shift the angle of the fruit as you drag it — forcefully — from the bottom to the top of the Microplane:

Repeat 20 times. Photo by James Ransom.

Here’s the idea:

  1. Start off with the pointy tip of the lemon face down, so that you’re looking straight into its stem end.
  2. As you move the lemon down the Microplane (I rested the Microplane against a plate for the photos above, but if your Microplane has a handle, you could always hold it over the bowl), rotate the lemon so that its entire curve comes into contact with the blades. You’ll make a flicking motion with your wrist, almost like you’re rolling a bowling ball.
  3. That means that the lemon will make an arc motion, and by the time you’ve reached the other end of the Microplane, its stem end is facing the tool and you’re looking at the pointy tip.
  4. If you’ve done a good job, you should have created a large streak of baldness from tip to tip.
  5. Now continue this motion until you’ve gone all the way around the lemon and shorn it entirely.
  6. Once you get good, it will only take you 8 to 10 motions to zest the entire lemon. Congratulations, you have become a lemon-zesting machine.

We created this pile of zest in approximately 5 minutes. Photo by James Ransom.

The motion was, for me, awkward at first. You need to get a great grip on the lemon and apply a surprising amount of force against the Microplane. You’ll also want to drag the fruit in as fluid a motion as possible — stopping and starting makes the process more difficult (and more risky). Because your fingers are coming in close proximity to the Microplane, I’d recommend wearing kitchen gloves when you’re first learning.

If I only have to zest a couple lemons for a cake or a salad dressing, I’ll still take my time. But if I’m baking or cooking on a large scale — or I want to prove my kitchen chops — you can be sure I’ll challenge anyone in the area to a high-speed Zest-Off. (And, pssst, I’ll win!)

Have you ever seen such bald lemons? Photo by James Ransom.

* * *

Now That You’re A Citrus-Zesting Machine . . .

Here are seven of our favorite lemony recipes, heavy on the zest.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

The perfect place to start practicing your technique, this recipe calls for a whopping three tablespoons of lemon zest. There’s lemon zest and juice in both the batter and the icing, so you’re guaranteed a zippy hit of citrus in every bite.

Lemony Cheese Blintzes

Another option for breakfast or brunch, these blintzes feature delicate crepes wrapped around a creamy farmer’s cheese filling. Lemon brings much needed acid and helps to lighten up these blintzes, ensuring you won’t have to take a nap right after breakfast.

One-Pot Kale and Quinoa Pilaf

Since it was published over a decade ago, this recipe has stood the test of time, and for good reason. It’s nutrient-dense, vegetarian, fast, and flavorful. The secret weapon? Meyer lemon zest (and juice!) bring acid and balance to this perfect pilaf.

Sautéed Shrimp With Lemon, Garlic, and Parsley

Lemon zest brightens up these garlicky shrimp that are perfect for a weeknight or any night you need dinner on the table in under 30 minutes. Serve alongside some spaghetti or a big chunk of crusty bread to sop up the delectable sauce.

Creamy Asparagus, Lemon, and Walnut Pasta

This super simple pasta is another great weeknight option and even better, it’s vegan! This brilliant recipe makes a cream-free creamy sauce from blending some of the asparagus with starchy pasta water, then tossing with chopped walnuts for texture and lemon zest for a pop of freshness.

Louisa’s Cake

Miss traveling? One bite of this cake and you will be transported to Italian summers. It’s an ethereally light ricotta cake packed with lemony tang. Make it for a special occasion, or make any day feel like a special one.

Meyer Lemon Cheesecake With Biscoff Crust

Meyer lemons shine to their fullest potential in this decadent cheesecake. If you’ve never tried Meyer lemons, this is a great entry point; they’re slightly sweeter than regular lemons, and perfect for dessert. Show off your new zesting skills on two of these gems and bake this gorgeous cake.

CPAC veers into neo-Nazi fantasy: Was it deliberate? That hardly matters

Once upon a time, the Conservative Political Action Conference was a relatively traditional and “mainstream” gathering of many divergent currents on the political right.

Fueled by the obsessive racist backlash against Barack Obama’s presidency and paranoid fantasies about a bogeyman fictional version of “the left,” the Republican Party rapidly became more extreme, contemptuous not just of “liberals” but of multiracial democracy and reality itself. During those years, CPAC came to resemble a political zoo or circus where assorted cast-offs, broken toys and fringe figures from the Republican Party and conservative movement could gather together and hatch their nefarious plots.

As a result, during the Obama era CPAC became something of a bellwether or leading indicator of the Republican Party’s embrace of right-wing extremism and anti-democracy fervor.

Writing at the Washington Monthly, David Atkins summarizes this:

But CPAC isn’t a sideshow. It’s the main stage of the conservative movement, predicting its future behavior in an era of widening asymmetric polarization. CPAC presaged the rise of the Party of Reagan over that of Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower. It heralded the scorched-earth confrontational politics of Newt Gingrich in the Bill Clinton era. It elevated George W. Bush at a time when the mainstream GOP still saw itself more in the mold of John McCain. It celebrated the Tea Party before GOP legislators had fully embraced it. And it promoted openly racist birthers and conspiracy theorists like Donald Trump at a time when the the mainline GOP was producing superficially anti-racist autopsies and promoting candidates like Marco Rubio and Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush.

So if we want to know where the Republican Party is heading today, we should pay close attention to CPAC.

It is now an obligatory stop for Republican presidential candidates and others seeking high office to win the approval. This year’s CPAC gathering — held in Florida rather than Washington, D.C. — was of course where the recently deposed former president and authoritarian cult leader announced his return to public life and plans to further dominate the Republican Party.

Today’s Republican Party did not slip and accidentally fall into neofascism and racial authoritarianism. Rather, it willingly leapt into that cesspool. CPAC has devolved into a “safe space” where such vile ideas are cultivated and normalized.

In her landmark 1951 book “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt previewed the way today’s Trump-controlled Republican Party has devolved into a fascist authoritarian movement, a cultural and political force that transcends voting, campaigns, elections and other forms of “normal” political behavior.

On Twitter, author Jared Yates Sexton recently echoed Arendt with a contemporary warning:

Continuing to pretend like we still live in a two-party representative system will only give room and cover to a fascist movement that is intentionally and systematically demolishing democracy and civil liberties. We must recognize the reality of the threat.

What we’ve witnessed, over the past few years, is the reveal of the GOP as a fascist movement to protect the white, wealthy, and powerful, an angry and violent rejection of democracy and human dignity. There is no saving them, there is no unity, there’s only avoiding tragedy.

At this year’s CPAC gathering, the escalation that Sexton describes became even more grotesque and dangerous. As reported by many reporters, journalists, and other observers, the main stage at CPAC was shaped like the Othala or Odal rune, an ancient proto-Germanic symbol worn more recently on the uniforms of some of Hitler’s most fearsome soldiers, including the infamous Waffen-SS.

In our own time, the Odal rune has also been adopted by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists in both the United States and abroad in an effort make their politics appear more palatable and normal to “mainstream” conservatives and other members of the right wing.

Predictably, Matt Schlapp, the organizer of this year’s CPAC gathering, denied any connection between the shape of the main stage and Nazism. Notably, Schlapp did not order the design of the stage changed after he was made aware of its ominous symbolism and history.

Ultimately, it is not the physical design of the stage at the 2021 CPAC gathering that is concerning, but more importantly the white supremacist and other racist and anti-human values and ideas being shared and reinforced by the event’s speakers and attendees.

To better understand the relationship between the Odal symbol, Nazism, white supremacy, CPAC, today’s Republican Party and the broader right-wing movement, I asked a range of experts from various backgrounds for their insights. 

James Scaminaci III, expert on right-wing politics and extremism

Starting with the disclosure that Steve Bannon’s Breitbart sanitized and mainstreamed neo-Nazi propaganda during the 2016 Trump campaign, that Trump himself retweeted neo-Nazi imagery during the campaign, and that within conservative media outlets there were “ghost” white nationalists, this shows that the infiltration has never stopped. Moreover, the displays are becoming even more overt.

I suspect, in a similar vein with Trump’s use of “88” notations, that this not initially intended for GOPers or conservatives who may or may not be aware of such imagery. Rather, it is intended for those on the left to notice and bring it out in the open, and then the right can have a culture-war fight about it. This reinforces their narratives of “cancel culture,” and their persecution complex. I think it is part trolling, part “owning the libs,” and using the libs to educate their own publics.

Moreover, the neo-Nazis and Klan, since at least 2005, have used conservative gatherings to infiltrate and spread their message. They approached the Tea Party with sanitized messages, hid their Nazi tattoos, and tried to coax them toward their viewpoint. They did this during the nativist anti-immigration movement between 2005 and 2008. They mixed with middle-class protesters. They’ve done this with the “reopen” campaigns. There is also speculation that at least some of the boogaloo militia were disguised neo-Nazis pushing their accelerationist agenda. Neo-Nazis and the Klan have had a chance to mingle with conservative, Christian GOP voters. You can see this in the conflation of the neo-Nazi “white genocide” with the more sanitized “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

Ultimately, what I see with the image at the CPAC conference is part of a long-term trend where neo-Nazis sanitize their rhetoric, sanitize their personal presentations and infiltrate the GOP, the Christian right and the “conservative” movement.

Gavriel Rosenfeld, historian, and author of “The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present,” “Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture” and “The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism“

Whether or not the much-commented-upon use of an Odal rune was coincidental or deliberate in creating the CPAC conference stage, the GOP in recent years has flirted with symbols and images used by the American and European far right. 

GOP politicians, including the now ex-president, have earned warranted suspicion for playing symbolic footsie with right-wing extremists in the form of various social media postings, retweets, and other dog-whistle endorsements. 

Most of these endorsements have involved new symbols used by the far right: Pepe the Frog, the VDare/Lion Guard Lion symbol (proposed as a possible symbol of a future Trump-led Patriot Party), white power “OK” salutes, etc. Thus far, while many MAGA supporters overtly use Nazi-era symbols (black sun, SS runes, etc.) the GOP itself has rarely endorsed actual symbols used in the era of classical fascism. 

The most notable exception was probably Trump’s retweeting of tweets smearing antifa with the Nazi-era red triangle sewn onto the uniforms of left-wing concentration camp prisoners. 

The Odal rune would be a notable exception to this, but at this point, CPAC has plausible deniability until better evidence surfaces. 

I’d say we are right to be vigilant about paying attention to (and calling out) the increasing willingness of the far right to “say the quiet part out loud” in terms of overt imagery, even if occasionally the fears are misplaced. For some time now, left-liberals are justified in being fearful of the increasingly unhinged right.

Tim Wise, anti-racism activist, speaker, and author of the new book “Dispatches from the Race War“

There are two ways of understanding this. The first is as a strange coincidence, in which a right-wing party whose leader has told white nationalists and assorted fascists to stand back and stand by, and claimed some among the Nazis in Charlottesville were “fine people,” just so happens to design the stage at their signature event in the shape of a Nazi symbol.

The second is as a deliberate wink and nod to those within the conservative movement who know the white nationalist base of their party and are signaling to it. But here’s the thing: Whichever of these is true hardly matters.

The Nazis will see this as a subtle endorsement of their ideology. That means more terrorism, more death and an ever-increasing threat to democracy. Which is why even if the design were innocent, this simply goes to show that the right has no interest in guarding against white racist terror by distancing itself from the kinds of people who stormed the Capitol or shot up the Walmart in El Paso or organized Unite the Right in 2017. Because if they wanted to disavow and distance from that bunch they would take pains to avoid things like this. They would work to avoid any sniff of Nazi impropriety. They want it both ways — to punch and then hide their hands. The rest of us must make it clear: This is who they are. It is who they have been for a long time.

Jean Guerrero, journalist, investigative reporter and author of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda“

The use of Nazi iconography is clearly meant to thrill the GOP’s increasingly racist base and to trigger the libs, as well as supporters of American democracy. No one should be surprised. They want people speculating about whether the symbol was used deliberately so as to distract from the now unquestionable reality, which is that the Republican Party is an extremist party. Mainstream Republicans have embraced white supremacist ideas that pose a danger to communities of color, just as they did in California during the ’90s amid fears about the “browning of America.” Stephen Miller is no longer a fringe figure of the party. He is the Republican Party.

Miller is always laundering white supremacist ideas through the language about heritage. I’m not surprised by the use of this specific symbol. What it dog-whistles is “white heritage.”

The 2020 Republican campaign: A systematic and sustained attack on people of color

After the November election last year, the national coordinating group of Republican state attorneys general boasted about the success of its aggressive advertising and media campaign against Democrats. The group had used incidents of violence that occurred alongside massive peaceful protests of police killings of unarmed Black men to portray Democrats as “lawless liberals” who “want to burn America.”

“Our five-month Lawless Liberals campaign earned millions of impressions” and “emphasized that the Republican AGs are America’s strongest defenders of economic freedom, defending the nation from threats of socialism, chaos, and lawlessness,” the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) wrote in its press release.

RAGA’s campaign produced at least 17 videos and a website that grossly exaggerated the degree of violence and distorted the positions of Democratic candidates to inspire fear among voters whom they hoped would give Donald Trump a second term as president and vote for other Republicans down the ballot.

As RAGA cynically manipulated the nation’s racial strife for political gain, it ignored a very real domestic threat that was snowballing across America. Far-right, violent extremism had been on the rise during the whole Trump administration, and increasing tensions associated with the upcoming elections put the threat into overdrive. Despite attempts by the Trump administration to cover up that threat and inflate the dangers posed by antifascists, anarchists and BLM protesters, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that “white supremacist extremists” posed the “most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland” in its October 2020 threat assessment.

In August, a right-wing police fan and Trump supporter, Kyle Rittenhouse, drove across state lines into Kenosha, Wisconsin, allegedly to protect businesses during a Black Lives Matter protest there. He killed two protesters and injured a third. 

But none of that fazed RAGA, which continued to pin violence solely on Black Lives Matter protesters and antifa, the loose network of activists who work to oppose fascism.

After Trump lost the election, at least 17 Republican attorneys general joined the lame-duck president in disputing the election results. RAGA’s nonprofit affiliate, the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), helped plan the Jan. 6 rally and march that culminated in the pro-Trump insurrection at the Capitol that left five dead, including one Capitol Police officer. 

Despite its extensive role in the day’s events, RAGA immediately issued a statement praising “the right of Americans to peacefully protest” while condemning “the violence, destruction, and rampant lawlessness occurring at the U.S. Capitol” — the same position leading Democrats took on last summer’s unrest that RAGA deliberately misrepresented for its own political purposes. 

The group’s ironic statement from November — “RAGA has repeatedly warned that the violence being perpetrated by Democrats would continue even after the Presidential Election” — remains online. 

Trump sets toxic tone

Racist fear-mongering is nothing new for the GOP, but over the last six years, Trump became the clear ringleader. Since beginning his first campaign in 2015 with a speech claiming that Mexicans were rapists and drug smugglers, the ex-president’s political record was defined by numerous racist statements and actions.

Early in the administration, Trump issued the ban on immigration from majority-Muslim countries (known as the “Muslim ban”) and deliberately separated immigrant families. Hundreds or possibly thousands of children are still isolated from their parents, and the Biden administration’s effort to reunify the families will be a challenge.

Throughout a term marked by Hatch Act violations, profiteering off the presidency and potentially criminal attempts to work with a foreign power to swing the 2020 election, Trump tried to label people of color, and those who support their basic human rights, as criminals. He created an office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to highlight crimes committed by immigrants. He falsely characterized the districts represented by Black Democrats, such as the late John Lewis of Georgia or Rep. Ihan Omar of Minnesota, as “crime infested.” And he repeatedly circulated videos of random incidents of Black men attacking white people, echoing the “black-on-white crime” myth beloved by white nationalists, including mass murderer Dylann Roof.

For years, neo-Nazis and other white nationalists celebrated Trump’s racist rhetoric.

“Man, President Trump’s Twitter account has been pure fire lately,” tweeted prominent neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. “This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for.”

Meanwhile, the former president lauded or refused to condemn far-right extremists. He famously stated that “very fine people” were among the white nationalists, neo-Nazis, alt-right adherents and other malicious bigots who came together at the Unite the Right events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, leading to the murder of a civil rights protester. Trump refused to disavow the right-wing street gang and hate group the Proud Boys or members of the QAnon cult, a far-right, pro-Trump movement predicated on anti-Semitic tropes and wild conspiracy theories. Proud Boys and QAnon fans would feature prominently in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.

Trump’s anti-Black attacks spiked in 2020 over the backdrop of Black Lives Matter protests, which swept the nation after a white police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for nine straight minutes.

As more than 15 million people of all races marched for basic racial justice, Trump called BLM “a symbol of hate” and signed an executive order aimed at jailing people who damaged monuments to the slaveholding Confederacy and other federal property. The June 2020 order instructed the attorney general to prioritize criminal prosecutions for the destruction of monuments on federal property, with prison sentences of up to 10 years. 

That executive order was the excuse that Trump’s agencies used for sending unmarked federal agents into Portland, Oregon, to round up leftist protesters. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf issued a dramatic press release at the time, calling protesters who engaged in vandalism “violent anarchists” and referring to their actions as an “attack [on] America” and a “siege.”

Expensive property damage occurred at some BLM protests from May to June, but the demonstrations were “remarkably nonviolent,” according to research by The Washington Post. “The overall levels of violence and property destruction were low, and most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the BLM protesters,” wrote the authors.

Roughly 93 percent of BLM protests from late May through late August were peaceful, according to a Princeton University study. However, law enforcement intervened more often than in other protests, sometimes escalating tensions and increasing the risk of violence, the study found.

As they inflated the threat posed by leftists, Wolf and his agency attempted to hide the biggest threat facing the U.S.: right-wing extremism. Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli ordered an intelligence official to both exaggerate the threat posed by antifa and anarchist groups and to minimize the threat posed by white supremacist groups, according to a whistleblower complaint.

Trump said he would classify antifa as a terrorist organization, and Republican members of Congress, especially Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, played along.

These distortions were the backdrop for Trump’s dishonest 2020 campaign strategy, which borrowed heavily from Richard Nixon’s racist “Southern strategy” of the late 1960s. He repeatedly claimed that Democrats and violence in cities led by Democrats would “destroy” the suburbs, a not-so-subtle attempt to scare white suburban voters about crime and entice them to vote for him, the supposed “law and order” candidate. 

Trump and his agencies pushed this narrative while police departments knew that far-right actors, who planned to attack protesters and law enforcement, were the primary threat. Many of these threats came from individuals affiliated with the boogaloo movement, a group of heavily armed anti-government extremists who want to incite a civil war. “Boogaloo bois” were among the Capitol insurrectionists, who ended up injuring nearly 140 police officers and killing one. Two other officers died by suicide after the insurrection.

After losing the election, in part because of his poor performance in the suburbs, Trump’s increasingly unhinged legal team set out to invalidate the votes of millions of Black voters in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The dozens of failed lawsuits filed by Trump campaign and Republican National Committee (RNC) attorneys were so laser-focused on invalidating Black Americans’ votes that the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued Trump, his campaign, and the RNC in December for conspiring to violate the rights of Black voters. 

“By targeting communities of color with false claims of voter fraud, and by coordinating actions to pressure state and local officials to discard votes cast in cities with large Black populations, [the defendants] have undermined our most sacred constitutional values,” said Sam Spital, LDF’s Director of Litigation. 

Multiple lawyers from the Trump and RNC teams risk being disbarred, and some have been sued for defamation.

The GOP’s racist electoral strategy

Trump and RAGA’s dishonest and ultimately dangerous actions characterize a broader racist electoral strategy by Republicans at the state and federal levels in 2020. GOP political and advocacy groups and individual candidates used coded language and overt racism in their attempt to scare voters and win elections.

The opening night of the Republican National Convention in August was all about fear. The event featured Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, who called Trump “the bodyguard of Western civilization,” and Patricia McCloskey, who claimed that Democrats “are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities” and want to “abolish the suburbs altogether.” McCloskey and her husband, Mark, infamously brandished guns in their yard during a St. Louis BLM march last summer.

With the president and much of the right-wing think tank and advocacy infrastructure behind them, GOP political candidates ran campaigns directly against BLM and antifa, hoping that their dishonest claims and histrionics would scare voters enough to sweep them into elected office.

Successful Tennessee Senate candidate Bill Hagerty resigned from the board of broker R.J. O’Brien & Associates after the firm tweeted support for BLM. In a statement, Hagerty claimed that BLM “seeks to destroy the nuclear family, calls for violence, promotes anti-Semitism, tears down monuments, and seeks to completely defund and dismantle our police departments.”

Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who lost her Georgia seat to Black pastor Raphael Warnock, attacked BLM and members of the WNBA team she co-owns, even going on white supremacist Jack Posobiec’s show to do so. 

Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, who is Black, compared BLM and antifa to the Ku Klux Klan, a notorious white supremacist organization that lynched Black men. Owens, like several other Republican House freshmen, appeared on QAnon-affiliated podcasts last year as he ran for office. Numerous other Republican members of Congress have bashed BLM, including QAnon adherent, Islamophobe and ant-Semite Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who has called it a domestic terrorist organization. The House stripped Greene of her committee posts on Feb. 4 because of her support for bizarre conspiracy theories and endorsement of violence against Democratic lawmakers in recent years.

Other Republicans ran racist ads, including successful House candidate Bob Good, whose ad claimed that his Black opponent would make people less safe over images of nighttime fires, riots and arrests. 

State and local GOP candidates, including in Texas and Kansas, used racist ads with the same theme: Democrats, under the influence of Black activists and antifascists, will set communities on fire and unleash alarming rates of crime.

Much of the conservative fear-mongering highlighted the phrase “defund the police,” a slogan used by activists and some progressive Democrats. Republican campaigns frequently distorted the nature of the position (many who used the phrase supported diverting some money from law enforcement budgets into public programs and did not advocate abolishing law enforcement altogether) and attributed it to candidates who did not want to “defund the police.”

It’s difficult to evaluate the overall effectiveness of Republicans’ racist strategy. The GOP did unexpectedly well in House races, gaining over a dozen seats after many observers expected Democrats to widen their majority, and made slight gains in state elections. But Republicans lost the White House and their Senate majority. 

Regardless of how successful the GOP’s racist campaigning was, it’s already clear that the party has no plans to temper its extremism. The Republican National Committee invited Trump to speak at its spring meeting, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had “a very good and cordial” meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Jan. 28 to discuss 2022 electoral strategy. 

Despite seven Republican senators joining Democrats in voting to convict the ex-president for inciting the Capitol insurrection — the highest number of opposition party votes for impeachment in U.S. history — and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s condemnation of Trump’s actions, state parties have rallied around Trump and attacked Republicans who voted to hold him accountable. 

The Wyoming GOP censured Rep. Liz Cheney, the House Republican Conference Chair, and asked her to resign after she voted to impeach Trump. The South Carolina GOP censured Rep. Tom Rice for voting to impeach Trump on Jan. 13. The Oregon GOP condemned the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment and dishonestly called the insurrection a “false flag operation designed to discredit Pres. Trump.” The central committee of the North Carolina GOP censured Sen. Richard Burr for his impeachment vote, and the state party in Louisiana censured Sen. Bill Cassidy.

GOP groups echo Trump

A number of right-wing think tanks and political networks also worked overtime in 2020 to support attacks by Trump and the GOP on BLM and to portray the discussion of the impact of slavery and racism on our country as an attack on American values.

The executive director of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play organization that connects corporate lobbyists with conservative state lawmakers to produce model legislation, supported Trump’s executive order on monuments. In July, ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson signed a letter backing the order, which portrayed racial justice protesters as “rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists” and “the mob.” In a nod to Trump’s attacks on the 1619 Project, an educational series with the premise that the U.S. was founded on slavery and racism published by The New York Times Magazine, the letter also says that Americans must “teach our history with honesty and respect” and uphold the nation’s “culture and values.”

Years ago, ALEC worked with the National Rifle Association to write a model bill that became Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” legislation, which led to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who killed an unarmed Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in 2012. Zimmerman’s exoneration sparked the first use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on social media.

The Heritage Foundation (co-founded by right-wing activist Paul Weyrich, who also co-founded ALEC) also attacks BLM directly. One article written by two staffers, originally appearing in the conservative New York Post, attributes a “radical, Marxist agenda” to the movement, something it portrays as a grave threat. The article and accompanying video that Heritage produced goes into hysterics over BLM goals, such as making tax codes more progressive and “supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”

A coalition of leaders of ALEC, Heritage’s political arm, the Tea Party Patriots and a Republican front group called Moms for Safe Neighborhoods ran dramatic ads against Biden and Kamala Harris, echoing GOP candidates’ claims that Democrats would endanger suburbanites’ lives.

Biden & Harris, You’re Not Safe With Them from Moms for Safe Neighborhoods on Vimeo.

The Capital Research Center, a right-wing “investigative think tank” and a member of the State Policy Network, has an ongoing series that attempts to discredit BLM. One “special report” titled “Radical Lives Matter” connected BLM with looting and radical leftist and cult violence, and compared last year’s incidents of police brutality to “a bogus martyrdom-by-police” narrative “invented by Eldridge Cleaver” to be “fed” to the mainstream media. The Capital Research Center is heavily funded by the Bradley Foundation, one of the top funders of right-wing, state-based groups.

As organizations like ALEC and Heritage attacked people’s right to challenge racist police killings and promoted a version of U.S. history that diminishes the role that racism and slavery played, one of their main funders bankrolled white nationalist hate groups. DonorsTrust, often known as “the ATM” of the conservative movement, funneled $1.5 million to the VDARE Foundation and $10,500 to the foundation behind the American Renaissance magazine in 2019, CMD first reported. The organizations are two of the most notorious white nationalist outfits in the U.S.

DonorsTrust is a donor-advised fund sponsor, meaning that it manages the individual charitable accounts of its donor clients, who “advise” DonorsTrust on which nonprofits to fund. When CMD asked DonorsTrust CEO Lawson Bader for comment, he mischaracterized his organization’s policies, claiming that his group has no control over where its donors direct their funds. However, according to DonorsTrust’s own literature, its board determines which nonprofits are eligible for donations.

The right’s racist strategy isn’t going anywhere

After Trump fans waged their Jan. 6 insurrection, some Republican members of Congress lied about antifa’s involvement and even attempted to blame the violence and deaths on BLM. Others, like Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, alleged that by supporting BLM, Democrats had normalized violence. Property destruction last summer was somehow justification for white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and white militias’ storming of the Capitol and plans to execute politicians. Republican members of Congress, including Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene, added to this false equivalence by accusing Democrats of hypocrisy for supporting the largely peaceful protests but decrying the anti-democratic invasion of their own workplace.

And since the GOP’s race-based scare tactics did not succeed at keeping its leader in the White House, the party is now doubling down on racial gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation to reduce turnout in communities of color.

The Brennan Center for Justice anticipates that the GOP will seek to further disenfranchise voters of color as they redraw congressional and state legislative districts, especially in the South, where increased political and racial diversity “pos[es] a serious new threat to the longstanding status quo of white Republican dominance.” Republican state lawmakers will control this year’s redistricting process in swing states like Florida, Georgia and Texas.

Seizing on a sea of lies from Trump and other Republicans about nonexistent voter fraud, state lawmakers have also filed more than 100 bills to make it more difficult for their constituents to vote by the end of January. If enacted, those measures will reverse 2020’s voter turnout progress and impose new, burdensome requirements on voters that disproportionately impact people of color.

Memo from Texas: Without big, bold progressive leadership, we die

President Joe Biden visited Texas on Friday as the Lone Star State worked to recover from a predictable major winter storm and preventable power outages. As a native Texas resident and longtime progressive organizer, I respectfully offer the following suggestions to the president. After a week without heat, water and food, Texans are ready for big, bold progressive leadership that sees the challenges of the future and seizes the moment to address them today. 

Texas just experienced its first statewide, 254-county climate change catastrophe alongside another monumental failure of a Republican-run government that better serves the short-term profits of their corporate backers than the people of Texas. The power went out, children froze to death, pipes burst and, for a week, millions of people’s lives were plunged into chaos.

I have worked and organized in Texas for over a decade. I have never experienced anything like the colossal statewide failure in governance that just occurred. I experienced the cold, the lack of water, the fear of being able to obtain food for my family and the uncertainty of this sad moment in our state’s history. What happened here must not ever happen again. 

While Democrats may control the federal government, progressives must invest in fighting for smart, effective governance at the federal, state and local level that meets the challenges facing our country. That means defeating the dangerous ideology of government “small enough to drown in a bathtub” locally in 2022. Last week, when the lights went out across Texas, the lights went on in many Texans’ heads. What they saw was not a naked Republican emperor, but one wearing a winter coat inside his house using the water in his bathtub he had planned to drown “small government” in to flush his toilet. If that vision wasn’t clear enough, we are likely to face an even worse disaster in the future.

The good news is that we can collectively do something about this: We can vote those responsible out. Let this be the moment in which we collectively activate for change. What happened in Texas is a call to action to organize and win policy changes now — and win elections in 2022. 

Texas has been a laboratory for Republicans to test their ideas of governance and leadership — and they failed miserably to protect Texans from catastrophe. In 1999, when then-Gov. George W. Bush signed into law an energy deregulation bill pushed by his largest corporate backer, Enron, they promised cheap, reliable energy. It turns out that Texans received neither — as recent weeks have demonstrated, without investments in excess capacity and winterization, the energy supply was not reliable. It also turns out that, according to a Wall Street Journal study, it wasn’t cheap either. Since the implementation of deregulation, Texans have paid $28 billion more for energy than if they had bought it from traditional utilities. Combined with the continued reliance on fossil fuel energy in the state, Republican governance made a bad situation worse, including worsening the climate crisis itself. 

Democrats won big in 2020, and must respond with policy victories that embrace bold progressive ideas that meet the moment and the needs of the people. Locally, we must organize and invest and, through collective action, ensure that disasters like what just occurred in Texas never happen again. 

Texas offers a clarion call for bold progressive policies that help all Americans, not just corporations and the mega-rich. We need policies that upgrade the energy system, invest in infrastructure, create millions of jobs and mitigate climate change. We need a $15 minimum wage to help Americans struggling through these multiple crises. We need laws that strengthen our democracy like the For the People Act  (H.R. 1) so that the public’s interests are served. Democrats should embrace these policies and provide real solutions for the real challenges that face our country. 

Mr. President, Republican governance has failed our state. Texans are looking to you to lead where Republicans cannot take us — a world where we invest in preventing disaster and preparing for the storms to come. 

Lindsey Graham tells Sean Hannity that Democrats should apply “the Republican model” to Andrew Cuomo

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, on Monday offered Democrats advice after a third woman came forward with sexual harassment allegations against Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.

“Well, here’s what I would tell my Democratic colleagues to do: follow the Republican model,” Graham told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

“We had a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court be accused of something the day before we voted — the moment before we voted — we could’ve gone ahead saying this is too late, you sat on this, you didn’t tell us, this is not fair. We stopped the entire damn process, we had days and weeks of hearings, we had another FBI investigation — we took it seriously,” he argued.

“And what should you do as Democrats regarding Cuomo? Do exactly what Republicans did,” Graham argued.

He was apparently referring to Republicans’ highly-criticized handling of Donald Trump’s Brett Kavanaugh nomination.

You can watch the video below via Twitter:

Prosecutors investigating Trump family business zero in on company’s chief financial officer: report

One of the Trump Organization’s top executives is the focus of prosecutors in New York City investigating the former president.

“State prosecutors in Manhattan who are investigating former President Donald J. Trump and his family business are sharpening their focus on the company’s long-serving chief financial officer, asking witnesses questions about his dealings at the company, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The increased focus on the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, could step up pressure on him to cooperate with the investigation if the prosecutors unearth evidence of wrongdoing on his part. He has served as the Trump Organization’s financial gatekeeper for more than two decades and could be a vital source of information for the government about the inner workings of the company,” The New York Times reported Monday.

The investigation may include Weisselberg’s family.

“In recent weeks, the prosecutors working for the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., have been interviewing witnesses who know Mr. Weisselberg and have asked at least one witness about Mr. Weisselberg’s sons, Barry and Jack Weisselberg, according to two of the people with knowledge of the matter. Barry Weisselberg has been the property manager of Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park, and Jack works at Ladder Capital, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest lenders,” the newspaper reported. “The district attorney’s office has not accused Mr. Weisselberg or his sons of any wrongdoing, and there is no indication that the sons are a focus of the investigation.”

The newspaper noted how impactful it would be if Weisselberg were to “flip” and turn state’s evidence against Trump.

“If the prosecutors were to secure Allen Weisselberg’s cooperation, it might provide a significant boost to the long-running investigation and deliver a blow to Mr. Trump, who has long depended on Mr. Weisselberg’s unflinching loyalty,” the newspaper noted. “Mr. Weisselberg, 73, an accountant, began his career working for Mr. Trump’s father and has overseen the Trump Organization’s books for decades. He recently ran the business with Mr. Trump’s adult sons during the Trump presidency and remained loyal to the company even after his name surfaced during congressional and federal investigations into Mr. Trump or his business.”

Read the full report.